How can Aptum help?
Aptum and its team has considerable experience in defending and leading a range of commercial trusts and estates disputes. We represent trustees, beneficiaries, executors, and claimants in matters involving:
- Family business and succession disputes, including challenges to discretionary and testamentary trust structures.
- Superannuation and insurance claims, particularly disputes over death benefit nominations and entitlements.
- Trustee-beneficiary disputes, including breach of fiduciary duty, failure to account, and mismanagement of trust assets.
- Trust property disputes, including applications for judicial advice and trust variations.
- Claims for breach of trust, negligence, or improper conduct by trustees or co-trustees.
Trusts often intersect with broader commercial and financial issues. Aptum applies deep expertise in financial service and securities, tax litigation, and corporations law to deliver strategic outcomes in trusts & estates matters.
Whether you’re defending a trust structure, challenging a will, or seeking resolution in a fiduciary dispute, Aptum offers clear advice, litigation strategy, and a commitment to achieving the best possible result.
"The whole team from the top of Aptum Legal down to the support team have all been very professional and always gone above and beyond for me and my family. I will highly recommend them for future work with people in my network needing legal professionals."
– Stephen Ryan
What makes Aptum different
Legal intelligence framework
Practical, ongoing risk assessment to focus on the essential.
Project management framework
Routine documented strategy through custom project management.
Case study
An accomplished farmer has his property protected in a family trusts dispute
Problem: Our client was a farmer who had spent approximately 60 years prior to the dispute establishing and developing numerous farms that had grown to a combined value of more than AUD$15M.
The properties for these farms were held in a property trust, of which our client’s son and his son’s wife were named beneficiaries of the trust, as well as directors of the corporate trustee. Our client was named as a general beneficiary and a director of the corporate trustee.
When the farmer’s son and the son’s wife decided to separate, they became engaged in a family law dispute relating to the division of the trust property.
The wife sought a 50% distribution from the trust on the basis that the husband and wife were entitled to 100% of the trust between them, ignoring our client’s interest and significant contribution to the trust.
Aptum’s role: Before Aptum was engaged, our client was effectively being ignored by the other parties to the divorce proceedings.
Using specialist corporate trust experience, Aptum’s role became to intervene in the proceedings on our client’s behalf so he could protect his interest in the trust.
Outcome: A negotiated outcome to this matter was achieved prior to trial that properly recognised and protected our client’s interest in the property.
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