Private Client & Trusts

Our expert private client lawyers provide strategic advice regarding asset planning, trusts, taxation, complex succession matters and migration to and from New Zealand. We regularly advise individuals, family offices, corporates, iwi and trustees on these and other related matters. 

We advise and act on contentious trust, estate and relationship property disputes. This includes litigation, alternative dispute resolution and pre-litigation advice and correspondence. Russell McVeagh frequently receives reverse briefs from leading barristers and is instructed on significant, complex and/or particularly sensitive private client disputes.      
 
Our team of specialists is drawn from across Russell McVeagh's practice groups with market-leading expertise in tax, immigration, trusts and corporate/commercial matters who can draw on the capabilities of the broader firm, including banking and finance, real estate and regulatory expertise. 
 
Much of the work we do has an international dimension and we have worked with a range of law and accounting firms around the world on these assignments. We work collaboratively with existing offshore or domestic advisors and can help you choose the best advisors in another country from our extensive networks.    
 

Our experience includes:
 

• advising offshore clients migrating to New Zealand on the New Zealand immigration, asset planning, tax residence and other tax aspects of their move to New Zealand.
• designing and implementing structures to protect and utilise clients' personal and business assets, including selection of an appropriate legal entity and efficiency of debt or capital funding matters.
• business and family asset succession and estate planning.
• advising high net worth individuals on the taxation of private wealth investment.
• advising on all legal aspects of the establishment, management, re-organisation and administration of trusts.
• advising on the use and taxation of trusts (and other entities) in domestic and international contexts, including the tax consequences of distributions to offshore beneficiaries and the migration of trust assets to or from New Zealand.
• acting on contentious cross-border and domestic trust disputes and applications (see, recently, Ivanishvili v Credit Suisse [2018] NZHC 1755 and Re NZGT [2019] NZHC 2548).
• advising on complex relationship property matters, including disputes in respect of relationship property agreements and the tax consequences of asset transfers under such agreements.

  
​We have assisted many of our private clients in their interactions with the Overseas Investment Office (which considers applications for approval for certain foreign investments), Immigration New Zealand, Inland Revenue and New Zealand Customs and will advise you on the practical aspects of dealing with these agencies.