Page 1255 - Week 05 - Thursday, 25 June 1992
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Thursday, 25 June 1992
______________________
MADAM SPEAKER (Ms McRae) took the chair at 10.30 am and read the prayer.
TRUSTEE COMPANIES (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (10.31): Madam Speaker, I present the Trustee Companies (Amendment) Bill 1992.
Title read by Clerk.
MR CONNOLLY: I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
This Bill will amend the Trustee Companies Act 1947, which regulates the trustee company industry in the ACT. The amendments are designed to allow trustee companies to provide a more efficient and competitive service to the people of Canberra. There are three main areas of reform in this Bill. Firstly, it will allow individuals to jointly administer a deceased estate with a trustee company. Secondly, it will allow trustee companies to charge fees on a service basis, rather than a commission basis for work done in the administration of deceased estates. Thirdly, it will allow trustee companies operating in the ACT to establish and maintain common trust funds.
In the past a person who was appointed as executor in a will or who was entitled to apply to the court for permission to administer the estate of a deceased person had the choice of either taking on the administration of the estate or passing the responsibility entirely to a trustee company. Many people placed in that position may wish, however, to have some input into the decisions regarding the estate, but not have the time or feel the confidence necessary to deal with the minute legal and financial detail involved. Such people will, as a result of the amendments in this Bill, be able to be personally involved in the estate, but also be able to rely on the professional expertise of the trustee company.
At present the fees charged by a trustee company for administration of a deceased estate are a percentage of the capital value of the estate. Clearly, this means that a trustee company will receive a large fee for dealing with a valuable estate, but only a small fee for administering an estate of low value. The fee paid on this basis has no relation to the amount of work actually involved in administering the estate. It is quite common, for instance, for a small estate to require a large amount of work in terms of ascertaining the financial position, contacting relatives and transferring assets. A larger estate, on the other hand, may have been kept in a very orderly manner and may consist of a small number of valuable pieces of property, and therefore require little work in administration.
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