Complex Property and Trusts

Nicholes Family Lawyers is uniquely experienced in large complex property matters. Our dedicated team of specialist family lawyers, many of whom have a developed background in general practice law firms, are committed to ensuring your interests are protected when navigating what can be otherwise considered an intricate and nuanced area of practice.

Our expertise in large complex property matters allows us to understand and quantify the matrimonial asset pool.  By unpacking your financial circumstances, we ensure to request information which may generate substantial leverage or will have a significant financial impact to the value of your property pool.

Our key areas of expertise:

  1. High-Asset Divorce: high net worth individual’s property matters can span across entities in numerous industries. Our industry experience includes sports, agriculture, transport, media, pharmaceutical and medical entities, as well as Information Technology and professional services.
  1. Property settlements: dealing with property settlements involving real estate holdings, business interests, and other valuable assets to ensure a just and equitable outcome requires comprehensive understanding of the legal rules surrounding property settlements, coupled with tactical and commercial skill in ascertaining value and contribution to the asset pool.
  1. Trusts: we frequently see the use of trusts in our client’s corporate structures, predominately due to a trust being an appropriate vehicle for many business and personal situations. 
  1. Binding Financial Agreements: our lawyers regularly draft enforceable binding financial agreements (or pre-nuptial agreements) which address complex property and trust matters, in a comprehensive manner to ensure that all property rights are protected effectively.

What sets us apart:

  1. Expertise you can trust: in our property matters we often see a myriad of entities used to either run a complex business or to manage passive investments. Each entity type such as a company, trust, partnership or superannuation fund has unique differences which are important to understand.  It is often in fine detail within our client’s entities where we find issues which can impact on a parties’ overall entitlement in a property settlement. 
  1. Informed approach: Combined with the appropriate experts (as needed) we can advise you with respect to corporate structures as they intersect with your family law matter, seeking to lift the corporate veil on complex corporate and trust structures where necessary.
  1. Client-centric approach: We listen and provide advice tailored to your particular circumstances. If the other party has put in protection measures in place to attempt to evade a parties’ family law entitlements, we will find ways to compel disclosure.  Through our use of both in-house and external forensic accounting services you can be assured that your rights will be properly represented even if you have little to no financial understanding or visibility of your family wealth.

Handling complex property and trust matters requires a keen eye, coupled with sound commercial knowledge and industry experience. Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation to discuss your legal options in navigating a complex property matter.