Re Mac [2020] QSC 3421 involved a seemingly narrow and specifically factual circumstance. It entailed a quest for lost beneficiaries and the impact of that on the distribution of an intestate estate. Its nexus to Vietnam later takes us to the Convention on the Rights of the Child2 and its relationship to the status of birth certificates and the right to acquire and […]

The New South Wales Office of State Revenue has deemed any discretionary trust to be foreign (and hence liable to higher duties) unless the terms of the trust make it impossible to pay money to a foreign person, now or ever, including removing power of amendment.  Any testamentary trust, wherever made, that holds real property in NSW is now affected. The changes took effect […]

In 1998 the Weizmann Institute of Science published a paper titled ‘Quantum Theory Demonstrated: Observation Affects Reality’. It discussed a phenomenon commonly referred to as the ‘observer effect’, which has entranced both philosopher and physicist alike. That is, in the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality.1 This phenomenon has now entered the realm of further provision […]