Why use pension documentation from DBA Lawyers

DBA Lawyers offers industry-leading pension documentation. In this article, I set out several key benefits of using pension documentation from DBA Lawyers.

Our expert lawyers regularly review and revise our documents

Our documents are regularly reviewed and revised to ensure they reflect the latest superannuation, tax and related practical and strategic developments. Each suite of documents is reviewed and approved by one of our lawyers. DBA Lawyers can also provide related superannuation, tax and succession planning advice.

We provide advice and assistance

We stay up to date with key developments and our lawyers can provide strategic advice and assistance as needed. This enables us to focus on providing the best SMSF documentation and related services and handle technical queries on an ongoing basis.

Our pension documents are easily understood

Our pension documents are written to be clear, concise, effective and easily understood. Our documents have been tested in various legal challenges and courts and our drafting has withstood the strongest scrutiny.

DBA Lawyers’ SMSF deed allows for new types of pensions

Our SMSF deed allows account-based pensions and transition to retirement income streams (‘TRIS’) and any other type of pension authorised by Australian law to be paid. Our deed has special drafting to preserve any prior pensions such as lifetime pensions, fixed term pensions, flexi-pensions, capped defined benefit income streams and various other ‘legacy’ style pensions that have been allowed under prior rules.

Our pension documents also allow an automatically reversionary pension to be made in compliance with the ATO’s ruling TR 2013/5. The ATO require strict compliance with this ruling for a pension to qualify as an automatically reversionary pension; thus there must be no discretion in relation to the reversion of the pension.

Ideally, our documents work best on the DBA Lawyers’ SMSF deed. However, our pension documents are also designed to work on other SMSF deeds.

We also offer numerous SMSF Kits to assist SMSF trustees and advisers.

A comprehensive offering

We supply comprehensive suites for documents that comply with relevant law and best practice. For example, for pension commencements including:

• Detailed covering letter and completion checklist
• Detailed Product Disclosure Statement
• Member Application
• Trustee Resolutions
• Segregation Trustee Resolutions
• Confirming Trustee Resolutions (for subsequent use if the figures have changed from those reflected in the initial trustee resolutions)

Shortcomings in other suppliers’ pension documents

Many other suppliers merely supply documents, some from questionable sources, without having any technical depth or qualifications to provide legal, tax or strategic advice. Some suppliers use outdated precedents and do not provide technical support, which can give rise to significant legal, regulatory and tax risks. We are aware, for example, of pension documents that do not:

• comply with the requirements in the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Regulations 1994 (Cth) (‘SISR’) which therefore may not entitle the SMSF to the pension exemption (as per the criteria outlined in TR 2013/5 that the governing rules of the pension must set out the prescribed criteria in SISR)
• support a valid and effective automatically reversionary pension –– refer to the newsfeed articles below on the importance of having such a pension
• come with a Product Disclosure Statement which is required under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth)
• provide certainty as to what wins out between a binding death benefit nomination (‘BDBN’) versus an automatically reversionary pension in the event of conflict. The DBA Lawyers deed expressly deals with this and again we refer you to our newsfeed articles below explaining why our pension documents are the best available and most legally sound (due to being prepared by qualified lawyers who review and approve each pension); and
• claim to have legal sign-off but if you read the supplier’s terms and conditions, the supplier disclaims responsibility and recommends that you get the documents reviewed and approved by a qualified lawyer before using

For more information

For more information and to order, click here.

By Bryce Figot, ([email protected]), Special Counsel, DBA Lawyers