It is a good deed and I am very happy with it. I did the corporate thing myself, Justin said it would add about $150 for him to do it and that was fairly straight forward. I only needed to ask a couple of questions.
It took me about 14+years of asking "trust questions" getting a consistant response of "you are not in a high risk job so you don't need a trust" from my 2 accountants over that time and a financial planner, thus buying properties of 99% in high income earner name and 1% in low income earner name, then I spoke to DaleGG a number of times before embarking upon the path of research (about 14mths) to get a solid understanding of the structures, how they worked and how they might fit my circumstances, reading both of Dales books in that time. Finally I was happy, I was surrounded by people who were informed, had my financial well being in mind and wanted to help me get it right. People who in reality could have charged me a fortune but imparted information and knowledge in the context of helping a person out, it was then that my business flowed to them, I already had Justin however.
I am not sure of how much Chris charges other lawyers and Justin has been my lawyer for quite some time so there are things that he does for me that I would not get charged for or he discounts his time for me. He did a great job of vetting and explaining the operation of the trust to me with some pointers to watch for in the deed re the responsibility of the trustee. He also spent some time communicating with my accountant (DaleGG) to ensure it all fitted with what I wanted and how Dale felt about it. All in all between the 3 of them, Justin/Dale/Chris I will only sing praises and recommendations to all who would like to listen.
Trustee company has been going 21mths and HDT 12mths or there abouts.
I will confess it took about 9mths to get it all sorted out and that was due to me not signing things properly on the incorporation documents and so I had to redo some stuff. ChrisBatten being very busy around the end of Financial year time (about 3 or 4 weeks) and then Justin having other priorities ie court etc, then me having a witness to a house purchase on the Gov't stamps that was going into the trust at the same time also being a director of the trust
that is not liked.
Through all of this he knew I was not in any urgent hurry, and when it came to needing it done to get a house into the trust then it popped out within about 2 weeks.
The time frames are general but ballpark, I dont' go through life recording events on a daily basis.
*** Nerd alert, I am an Electronics Engineer working on Network Design about 50years old and tend to be a bit of a pain, pedantic, so will learn, research and fully understand something before jumping, how ever once that point is reached I shall jump fearlessly ***
I rue the time I wasted, by listening to the earlier advice, not following through and crosschecking, it has cost me a small fortune. That is why at the beginning of this thread I was saying, build in the flexibility now, and get it right now, then you can, in the future not look back and curse the incorrect advise. Admittedly back in 1987 I would have been put in an a DT and not an HDT but at least my properties that are currently outside the trust would be protected and I would have had extra deductions and I would not be in a situation of costing about $8,000+ in stamps per property and dunno how much in CGT to put them in to the now trust.
Plus the 99%/1% is great when they are negative geared but for a couple of them, NOT NOW cos the high income earner now pays the tax on the rent
due to eventually they all will go positive, so i am now looking at tax vis cost of selling them into the trust and out of my name.
Norman
