By Claire Endean, Director, Dawsons Lawyers

Retirement planning tends to focus on money and lifestyle. Fair enough. But there is a legal side too, and it is much easier to sort while life is calm than in the middle of a health scare or a family crisis. Here are the five things we suggest ticking off.

1. Review your will

If your will is more than a few years old, it may not reflect your life now. Grandchildren arrive, property gets sold, executors move overseas. Retirement is also when many people restructure their assets, and a will written for your old circumstances can produce odd results. Read it, and if anything makes you pause, update it. If you do not have one, the law decides who gets what, and that formula rarely matches what people actually want.

2. Put enduring powers of attorney in place

EPAs let someone you trust make decisions if you cannot. There are two kinds, one for property and one for personal care and welfare. The common mistake is waiting. EPAs can only be set up while you have capacity, and if you lose it first, your family faces a slower and more expensive court process to be appointed instead. If you do one thing on this list, make it this.

3. Look at how your property is owned

Whether your home is owned jointly, as tenants in common, or through a trust changes what happens when one of you dies. Many couples do not know which applies to them. It takes minutes to check and it matters, especially in blended families where each partner wants to provide for their own children.

4. Ask whether your trust still earns its keep

Plenty of family trusts were set up decades ago for reasons that no longer apply. Trusts come with ongoing obligations and costs, and the law around them has tightened. Some are still doing a valuable job. Others are just extra admin. A review will tell you which yours is, and winding up a trust that has outlived its purpose can simplify life considerably.

5. Talk to your family

Not a legal document, but the step that prevents most disputes. If your family knows what you have decided and why, there are fewer surprises later. You do not need to share every detail. Even a broad conversation about who your executors are and where the documents live saves real stress.

When to do it

Now, ideally. None of this takes long, and most of it stays done for years once sorted. If a retirement village move is on the horizon, do the review first, since selling the family home changes the picture.

We help East Auckland families with all of this every week. If your paperwork needs a tidy-up, give us a call.

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