Many of you may recently have received a “Wills Day” colour brochure from the NSW Trustee & Guardian in your letter box offering free Wills. BE VERY WARY. This “offer” is their standard old polava whereby they offer to prepare your Will for free providing they are named as your Executor (similar to a Will that a solicitor could prepare for you for less than $300.00). To their credit they do add that charges only apply on Estate Administration, but what they fail to set out is at what cost.
The short answer is – LOTS and it is irrespective of the complexity of the Estate. The Trustee when acting as Executor of an estate charges an astonishing amount more to finalise an Estate than most solicitors do to carry out the same job. Whilst it is not common to have estates of $5-$10 million in assets which is where the largest discrepancy can be seen (5-8 times more), many estates are in the $1-$2million range where the Trustee charges around 3-4 times more. This massive charging is legislated. The following link will take you to their fees page http://www.tag.nsw.gov.au/executor-fees-and-charges.html
The Trustee has its place and is a very important institution to preserve peoples rights in NSW and by all means attend the free Wills days scheduled around NSW to obtain information. But consider very carefully whether you allow them to prepare your Will. It may save you $300 now but your kids will be shaking their heads and muttering under their breath after you are gone when they realise their inheritance has been gobbled up by the Trustee’s commission.
By way of comparison of fees, a chart setting out the respective costs of carrying out probate work is set out below:-
200k $1,510.3 $4,400.00
500k $2,083.00 $7,700.00
750k $4,787.20 $14,850.00
$1Mill $6,017.00 $17,600.00
$2Mill $7,843.00 $28,600.00
$5Mill $12,100.00 $61,600.00
$10Mill $17,055.00 $116,600.00
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