Advice Family Law

Advice Family Law – Plan ahead

Advice Family Law offers customised, full-service solutions based on family law to ensure the best possible outcome for you and your family.

Family law advice means big picture planning for you and your family. We help you map out your current family law situation and then prepare wills and other family law documents. If you already have a will, we can review it to ensure that it is relevant to your current situation.

Family law is not an island unto itself, however, and if necessary, we will take advice from our colleagues at Advice Tax in order to optimise your outcome from a tax perspective. And if you run one or more companies, our colleagues at Advice Accounting are on hand with full-service solutions for accounting-related issues.

Last wills and testaments

Anyone aged 18 or over can – and should – draw up a will. If you don’t, your assets will be distributed in accordance with the statutory intestate succession.

A will allows you to determine that the estate you leave behind after your death will become the private property of your heir. And while a will can be prepared in line with the testator’s wishes, if there are direct heirs, they must inherit their lawful portion, i.e. half the inheritance share.

Equally, the person drawing up the will may have inherited assets with right of free disposal, which means that there are restrictions on how they can distribute their estate.

Estate inventories and estate distribution

When a person dies, an estate inventory must be drawn up within three months of the death occurring. This estate inventory, which is a summary of the deceased’s assets and liabilities on the day they died, must be submitted to the Swedish Tax Agency for registration within four months. If the person in question was married, the assets and liabilities of the surviving spouse must also be reported in the estate inventory, along with details of estate’s beneficiaries, any last will and testament, and any insurance policies, etc.

Once the estate inventory has been registered, the process of estate distribution can begin, i.e. the distribution of the deceased person’s estate assets between the estate’s beneficiaries.

Cohabitation & co-ownership agreements

It’s a good idea for anyone thinking of living with another person without being married to them to draw up a cohabitation agreement in which you agree that the Swedish Cohabitees Act shall not apply to your shared home and household goods.

The cohabitation agreement can be complemented with a co-ownership agreement where you agree on how to regulate your joint property, e.g. how costs shall be shared, what happens if you go separate ways, and the price payable to buy each other out of the shared home.

If you and your partner have contributed different amounts to the down payment, it may also be a good idea to draw up a promissory note.

Pre- and postnuptial agreements

Pre- and postnuptial agreements can be drawn up before you get married or during marriage, respectively. The spouses can specify, in the agreement, that all property or some property shall be private property, i.e. not included in the partition of joint property in conjunction with a divorce. If you want to convert an asset from matrimonial property to private property, or vice versa, then drawing up and registering a pre- or postnuptial agreement is the way to go.

Lasting Powers of Attorney

A Lasting Power of Attorney is drawn up for use at some point in the future. It comes into effect, in other words, when the principal is no longer able to handle their affairs in the areas specified in the Power of Attorney. The Power of Attorney can be general, and consequently comprise all financial matters, or it can be limited to ongoing matters.

The law prohibits the Power of Attorney from comprising matters relating to medical care, dental care, and other strictly personal concerns, such as drawing up a last will and testament.

Spouses will usually designate each other as the Power of Attorney agent, but children can also be granted Power of Attorney for their parents.

Deeds of gift

We also draw up deeds of gift between spouses, between parents and children, etc. The deed of gift can include certain terms and conditions: the gift may, for example, be designated as private property, etc.