Meet Emily Ryan

Emily is an Associate in the Business Advisory Team at Bennett & Philp Lawyers. She works closely with individuals, families, and business owners to help them plan for the future with confidence, providing practical and tailored advice that aligns with their personal, family, and commercial objectives.

She has experience assisting clients across a broad range of succession and estate planning matters, helping them implement strategies to facilitate the transfer of assets and control across generations. Her experience includes preparing simple and complex estate planning documents (e.g. wills, enduring powers of attorney and advanced health directives), as well as advising on and documenting succession arrangements to pass control of related entities (e.g. trusts, companies, self-managed superannuation funds etc.) to future generations.

Emily also assists executors, administrators, and beneficiaries in the administration of deceased estates, providing practical guidance throughout the estate administration process. She advises on a range of estate-related matters, including obtaining grants of probate and letters of administration, administering estate assets, and advising on any estate taxation issues that may arise.

As a Chartered Tax Adviser, Emily also provides advice on a range of tax matters, including federal and state taxes. She also assists clients with superannuation tax issues, including SMSF compliance issues, voluntary disclosure for breaches and taxes on superannuation death benefits. In the estate context, Emily advises on the taxation implications arising from deceased estates, including capital gains tax, foreign executors or beneficiaries and tax upon distributions of estate assets.

Emily’s combined expertise in succession planning, structuring, estate administration and taxation enables her to deliver holistic solutions to often complex succession issues. She takes pride in helping clients navigate important decisions with confidence and ensuring their succession objectives are achieved.

Recent highlights include

• preparing a bespoke shareholders agreement for an SMSF corporate trustee, to provide a framework for decision-making processes and funding and payment of member benefits upon death or incapacity
• preparing a bespoke trust deed that effectively divided a trust into “portions” for each family group, facilitating the client’s succession objectives while addressing issues regarding beneficiaries of a trust and windfall gains tax in Victoria
• preparing a voluntary disclosure in relation to illegal early access for an SMSF