Thursday, October 1, 2015

How do I replace a deceased trustee in an SMSF?

Sharmistha Bose, Product Marketing Specialist

We have recently been receiving an increase in customer enquiries about recording a change in trustee after one has passed away. Based on the feedback, we’re happy to announce the release of our new SMSF product, Change SMSF trustee (death of a trustee).

Dealing with a trustee’s death can be quite confronting and if there is a requirement to amend the SMSF trust deed, up until now, the process has been more convoluted than necessary. The solution offered by a few document providers is to require you to place an order for a normal SMSF Change of Trustee and then, to provide the underlying trust deed to them so they can customise or manually amend the documents. Costs associated with this are quite high along with the likelihood of errors due to the double handling.

Cleardocs aims to be different. We have designed a document package that specifically caters for the situation of the death of a trustee. After placing an order with us, there is no further manual drafting involved. You will immediately receive a link to download your ready-to-sign documents.

What scenarios for change of trustee are covered?
This document package is only required if there is one surviving individual trustee and the fund wishes to replace:
  • the deceased trustee with 1 or more individual trustees; or
  • individual trustees with a corporate trustee.

If there are 2 or more surviving trustees, the structure complies with the SIS Act and the fund is not required to replace the deceased trustee. If the fund does wish to, one of the other Change SMSF Trustee document packages can be used to appoint additional trustees.

You can read more about the requirement to amend the SMSF trust deed in our ClearLaw article “The reality of ageing SMSF trustees: death of an SMSF trustee”.

What are the benefits of the new document package?
  • Documents generated online within minutes.
  • The documents are complete and ready-to-sign – no further drafting is required.
  • Deals with the reality of an ageing population and the ageing of SMSF trustees.
  • An SMSF does not require an underlying Cleardocs trust deed to use this document package.
  • For a change from individual trustees to a corporate trustee, we will also update your trust deed to the latest version of the Cleardocs deed.
  • Our master documents are expertly drafted by lawyers at top 20 law firm, Maddocks.

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