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Australia’s unprecedented intergenerational wealth transfer is driving a surge in wills and estates disputes, placing growing pressure on specialist and boutique law firms as they navigate an increasingly complex succession law landscape.
Australia is experiencing an unprecedented intergenerational wealth transfer, bringing with it a surge in wills and estates disputes.
Rising property prices, cost-of-living pressures, and increasingly complex family structures are reshaping the succession law landscape, placing growing demands on practitioners.
In a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, Jerome Doraisamy spoke with Armstrong Legal managing associate James Daly and discussed the key drivers behind rising litigation, the challenges facing specialist and boutique practices, the impact of artificial intelligence on the profession, and what the future holds for wills and estates lawyers.
The rise of wills and estates disputes
With Australia in the midst of an unprecedented intergenerational wealth transfer, wills and estates practitioners are seeing a growing wave of disputes, influenced by rising property prices, cost-of-living pressures, and seemingly complex family structures.
“There’s always wills and estates litigation and people always have a bit of a dispute about the wills,” Daly said.
“At the moment we’ve got a situation where house prices in most capital cities [...] are still fairly high, but people are doing it tough.
“It’s not just the fact that we’ve got an intergenerational wealth transfer, it’s also the type of assets that people had.
“When I first started practising, I was mainly dealing with the assets of my grandparents’ generation, who were the silent generation.”
Escalating financial interests are further altering conflict dynamics, with legal professionals observing heightened animosity among opposing sides and more challenging mediation sessions.
“We’re seeing more claims for family provision from children than we have in a while,” Daly said.
“Everyone’s trying to get as much as possible, and it’s making mediation harder.
“I was in mediation a few months ago, and the mediator said that it’s just becoming tougher and tougher for them to resolve the claims; and we’re all finding it.”
The challenges and opportunities for specialist boutique firms
For specialist practices, the increase in disputes is creating significant workloads while new technologies and increasingly demanding clients are adding another level of complexity.
“We’re all inundated, we’re all busy, busy, busy working away,” Daly said.
“We’re all doing what we can; we’ve also had the introduction of AI as well, which has just made things much more complex because some clients are just burying us with information which they’re trying to help, but they’re not really.
“You do have to spend that extra time and money preparing your client, making sure they know what’s happening.
“Again, it’s a perfect storm; everything’s just hitting us at once.”
Looking into the near future, Daly indicated that the profession must also confront the longer-term implications of AI, especially its impact on junior lawyers and the pipeline of future specialists.
“What I’m most concerned about is that it’s going to take the work of junior lawyers, which means that the stock of lawyers is going to decrease,” Daly said.
“I love helping people, and I love being able to get resolution for my clients that advances what they’re after.
“When I can get a good settlement for a client, and I give them a telephone call to say, we’re transferring this money into your account, it’s all over.
“And the gratitude I get from the clients just makes every tough day worth it.”
