How can Aptum help?
Aptum and its team has considerable experience in defending and leading a range of commercial trusts and estates disputes, including family business structures; superannuation and insurance claims; trustee/ beneficiary disputes; trust property disputes; and breach of trust claims.
Aptum recently achieved a notable outcome in the Supreme Court, in a dispute between trustees and a beneficiary relating to access to trust documents.
Trusts are involved in many commercial disputes. Aptum applies experience and expertise in areas such as financial services and securities litigation, tax litigation, and Corporations Law to achieve the most effective outcomes in Trusts & Estates disputes.
"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.
READ CASE STUDIES