Thank you

If you are reading this, you were part of an evening I genuinely enjoyed. Twenty plus people around a table in South Yarra, talking honestly about wealth, family, and the conversations most of us keep finding reasons to postpone. That kind of conversation is rarer than it should be. I am grateful you were part of it - and I trust you enjoyed your bag of chocolate.

I want to leave you with the key ideas from the evening, a question worth sitting with, and an invitation to stay in touch if any of it resonated.

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The questions

• Do you know where control of your wealth sits - and does your family?
• Is your plan built around what happens after you die - or around what happens while you are still here?
• Who in your family knows the whole picture - and who is operating on assumptions?
• Is equal the same as fair in your family - and does everyone agree with your answer?
• What conversation are you postponing - and what is the cost of continuing to postpone?

You do not need a lawyer to answer that question. You need a table, some honesty, and the people you love.

But if tonight raised something more specific - a concern about your family wealth is controlled, a question about how your trust is structured, a situation that has been sitting unresolved -  I encourage you to reach out to your advisers.

About our conversation

Tonight was all about generational wealth transfer, navigating family dynamics, and having the conversations you need to, while you can.

 - having a Will is not the same as having a plan

- know where control of your wealth actually sits

- superannuation does not pass under your Will

- think about succession as a process, not as an event

- transfer knowledge before you transfer control

- document the differences between gifts and loans

- start the family governance conversation now, not later

To read about the court cases we discussed, click here.

About me

I am a lawyer, mediator, notary public, and speaker based in the Sutherland Shire in Sydney. I have been practising law since 1996.

I run my own boutique law firm specialising in business, property, estates and litigation. Outside the law firm I work as an accredited NMAS mediator, a notary public for international documentation, a director on NFP boards, and an accredited adviser with the Family Business Association.

The speaking work - and the conversations like the one tonight - comes from a conviction I have held for over 30 years of legal practice: that most legal problems are human problems first. They start with a relationship, an assumption, an expectation that was never named out loud. And they are almost always better resolved around a table than in a courtroom.