YOUR FINANCIAL JOURNEY
Financially Assisting Adult Children.
Financially Assisting Adult Children
How can I help support my child who is struggling financially?
If you have a child who is struggling financially, it can be worrying for your family and hard to know how to support each member of the family equally.
Some questions that you might ask your Locumsgroup adviser:
- Are we in a position to help without it having too much of a negative impact on our own situation?
- If we provide assistance to our child, how could this be fairly reflected towards our other children?
- Are there any Centrelink repercussions that may impact us?
- What happens if we transfer funds as a gift, and there’s a divorce? Can we protect the gift for our bloodline?
Live gifting can be rewarding, helping children in the right circumstances can be a benefit to all concerned. However, there are pitfalls and talking through gifting with an adviser today can help avoid problems tomorrow. Families are complex and decisions are often loaded with emotion, being able to talk things through with a professional outside of the family can be highly beneficial.
We can help provide guidance around:
- Is gifting affordable?
- guidelines around how much they can gift without risking their own financial stability.
- considering future funding of aged care if it is needed.
- a sense of the trade-offs they might need to consider
- Having comfort in the knowing that through good Estate Planning they can equalise the money given to one child without detriment to the others.
- Is gifting the right answer?
- How did their child get into this position?
- Will this happen again in five years’ time?
- What if the money isn’t used as its intended and debt is incurred again?
- How can we control the use of the gift if we think that’s necessary?
My child is financially dependent on me, how can I ensure their future is safeguarded?
If you are the sole carer of a child who is financially dependent on you, it is understandable that once in retirement, you will worry about what will happen to your child when you’re no longer around.
Some questions that may have been concerning you that our team can assist with may include:
- Can you run some projections for me to provide me with more certainty around how long I can financially support my child?
- My child does not have the capacity to manage their financial affairs, leaving money in my Will isn’t going to be good enough, what can I do?
- What if an unscrupulous person takes advantage and leaves my child impoverished?
- Could I trust a family member to help?
- How can my child access the money as needed but at the same time have some protection from using the money unwisely?
- How am I able to ensure that my wishes are followed in preparing for my child's future?
Our team of expert advisers can help find solutions and plan for a secure and stable future for families. Some learnings could include:
- Projections to ensure enough money will be available to support your child throughout their life.
- There are many Estate Planning options to consider that go well beyond a simple Will.
- We can help set up a structure that will provide protection from financial predators.
- It’s possible to legally nominate a person or persons to assist your child in managing their financial affairs.
- There are structures which allow free access to capital under the supervision of trustees.
- Advice around tax implications on investment properties if you choose to sell.
Rest assured that with solid advice, good planning and clear structures in place, your child can be financially supported throughout their life.
My child is financially dependent on me, how can I ensure their future is safeguarded?
If you are at a stage in life where you feel financially stable to help your children now rather than after you’re gone, we recommend making an appointment with Locumsgroup to help with any concerns and queries you may have including:
- We would like to consider helping support our children financially now as opposed to when we’re no longer around, but we’re worried about running out of money ourselves. Can we do this is we require aged care or have major health concerns?
- How can we protect the money we provide to our children? I.e. What if one of our children gets divorced?
- Can we provide for our grandchildren’s private school fees?
After meeting with the Locumsgroup team, our clients have:
- A clear understanding around affordability of gifting through:
- guidelines around how much they can gift without risking their own financial stability.
- options around future funding of aged care if it is needed.
- a sense of the trade-offs they might need to consider, holidays vs education funding for example.
- A strategy to protect any monies that they may consider gifting/loaning to their daughter.
- A structure around school fees for the course of their grandchildren’s schooling.
- Ensuring gifting will be fair to each of their children.
