Trust deeds, appointor succession, and the structures that carry wealth from one generation to the next.
Opportuna Legal advises on the trust and succession instruments that determine how wealth is held and how it transfers. Engagements range from a single trust deed review through to a multi-generational succession plan for a family enterprise.
Reading the trust deed before acting. Reviewing existing trust deeds for structural defects, variation power, and unforeseen consequences. Variations, restatements, and restructures where the deed allows.
The single most important succession question in most family trusts. Identifying the current appointor, what happens on death or incapacity, and how to put the right successor in place before it matters.
Generational handover of family businesses, including next-generation structuring, governance overlays, and the interaction between business succession and the family wealth structures that sit around the business.
The broader architecture: how discretionary trusts, family companies, superannuation, and personal holdings sit together, and how that architecture can be reviewed and refined over time.
When two parties hold property through a jointly held unit trust and the relationship between them breaks down, neither party has a general right to walk away from the arrangement. The NSW Court of Appeal confirmed the position in Carr v Ritossa [2025] NSWCA 108.
Read article →A will and a family trust deed are separate instruments. Where someone controls a discretionary family trust, the assumption that a well-drafted will settles the question of what happens to their assets on death is not correct.
Read article →A 2026 Supreme Court of NSW judgment exposed three structural defects in a standard 1986 discretionary trust deed — a narrowed beneficiary class, a lapsed appointor role, and an inoperative variation power — and 14 years of invalid distributions that followed.
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