The Wrong Advice Could Cost You A Fortune
Have you ever had a friend or family member say, "You should just do this..."?
This week alone, we met with two clients who had been given well-intentioned legal advice that sounded like a great solution... but could have ended up costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The tricky part is that bad legal advice often sounds completely reasonable until someone explains why it isn't.
In this quick 2-minute video, Ross shares these real-life examples and explains why it's always worth checking legal advice before acting on it.
A five-minute conversation today could save you from an expensive mistake tomorrow.
Working with you,
Ross Millen & The Millens Team
Ross Millen:
Hi. What we sometimes see is a bit of synergy. Sometimes something happens in our practice and then we see the same thing a couple of days later. And what I've noticed this week is that we had two clients who came in and said a very good friend had given them some legal advice and they wanted to implement something. Now in the first case, this was someone who was concerned that their mother was not receiving an aged pension. She was in aged care, having to pay the daily fees, but not receiving any aged pension to cover that. So she was eating into her nest egg, so to speak. And they said, "Oh, the friend's advice was you just get rid of your mother's assets, get them all out into a trust. Then she qualifies for an aged pension, problem solved." Well, when we pointed out that there was this idea of deprivation of assets, you can't just give your assets away and then pretend you don't have them.
The aged care people say, "No, that's deemed to remain your asset." Plus a transfer of those assets would create a stamp duty liability and also a capital gains tax liability, probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, no cash to pay it. So it wasn't a very good idea. In the second case, someone had said, "Oh, take a right of first refusal over this property and then lodge a caveat." Well, a right of first refusal is a contractual thing. It doesn't give you a property interest. You can't lodge a caveat. So after we'd advised our clients about these two things, they realized that the legal advice they got from their friends that seemed fantastic, in fact, wouldn't work. So remember, if you're ever getting suggestions or advice from family members or friends, always run it past us. We're the legal experts. We can make sure you don't make costly mistakes.
So I'm Ross Millen at Millens. Contact me or any of our team here for the correct legal advice.