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As family enterprises grow and generations expand, ownership structures and personal circumstances inevitably become more complex.
Protecting what the family has built while ensuring clarity, fairness and continuity, requires more than documents alone. It needs thoughtful planning, open conversations and alignment across generations.
For some families, the priority is estate planning. For others, asset protection and ownership safeguards are front of mind. In practice, these considerations are interconnected and must be addressed together to avoid uncertainty, unintended consequences or future conflict.
We work with families to help them understand how assets are owned today, how risk is managed, and how ownership and wealth are intended to transition over time. Our focus is on ensuring that personal, enterprise and family objectives are aligned, so that plans work not only technically, but in real life.
Our role is to facilitate clear, structured conversations around ownership, asset protection and estate planning, often across multiple generations and family branches. We help families articulate their long‑term vision, consider alternative scenarios, and make informed decisions that protect both the enterprise and family relationships.
We can work closely with legal advisers to ensure arrangements are clearly documented and understood, providing a coherent picture of the overall group structure and the assets and entities involved. Importantly, we ensure that the intent behind these arrangements is shared and communicated, helping to reduce the risk of misunderstanding or dispute in the future.
Our work in this area is designed to:
By respectfully addressing ownership, asset protection and estate planning together, we help families move forward with confidence, knowing that what they have built is protected and positioned for the generations to come.
National Managing Partner – Private Enterprise
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The announced 30 per cent minimum tax on discretionary trusts creates significant challenges for private groups.
Succession is no longer just about who takes over. Many family businesses are using succession planning as a catalyst to reassess whether their current structure is still fit for purpose. As businesses scale, trust or partnership structures can become restrictive. Issues may include limited asset protection, challenges winning commercial contracts, reduced buyer appeal, and constraints on reinvesting profits to support growth.
In estate planning, the focus is often on technical elements like drafting a will, appointing executors, minimising tax, and ensuring assets pass as intended. While these steps are important, they only form part of the picture.
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