Gerard Basha

Gerard heads our Estate & Probate, Tax for Individuals and Business Succession Groups. He is an Accredited Specialist in Wills and Estates Law and a Notary Public and is recognised as one of Australia’s leading lawyers in his fields of expertise. Gerard also specialises in the Not-For-Profit Sector.

Gerard combines a broad understanding of the law with specialist skills in the legal issues surrounding estate planning and succession. He is committed to lifelong learning. He believes in the value of long-standing relationships and he has been advising many of his private and NFP clients for some time.

 

What Gerard’s clients say

'Words cannot express how grateful I am for the job you did on Mum's estate. You were the perfect person to handle the situation. You showed great diplomacy the way you handled us both.”

- Private client, Greer

 

Qualifications/Memberships

• Bachelor of Economics (Macquarie University)

• Bachelor of Laws (Macquarie University)

• Master of Laws (Sydney University)

• Accredited Specialist in Wills and Estates Law

• Master of Applied Laws (Wills and Estates) (College of Law)

• Notary Public

• Chair of the NSW Wills and Estates Law Accredited Specialists Practice Group

• Registered Trust and Estate Practitioner - Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners

• Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Notaries

Specialist Accreditation is a structured peer to peer assessment process enabling legal practitioners to be recognised for their expertise.  To be accredited specialists they must pass a series of meticulous assessments on both legal knowledge and its application in practice. To retain their accreditation specialists must undertake significant additional professional development in their area of expertise each year.

 

A word from Gerard

“I continue to enjoy the mixture of law and commerce in achieving the most desirable outcome for my clients and value the confidence they have shown in me over our long client relationship.”

 

Career highlights

• Being recognised as a leader in NSW and Australia-wide in Wills & Estates Litigation and Wills, Estates and Succession Planning in 2015 - 2023 by Doyle’s Guide to the Australian Legal Profession.

• Being asked to act as an expert witness in Succession Law cases.

• Successfully defending a trustee from a Supreme Court application to remove him without any proper legal basis, in a case reported extensively in the press.

• Author of a thesis on informal Wills and been involved in numerous Supreme Court cases involving informal Wills.

• Writing and publishing a research paper on judicial advice for trustees and being involved in numerous applications for trustees.

• Being awarded top graduating student in Masters of Applied Law (Wills and Estates) by the College of Law in 2012 and being asked by the College to lecture to students on the topic of judicial advice for trustees.

 

Specific areas of focus

• Estate planning

• Guardianship Division work

• Probate and deceased estate administration

• Estate disputes

• Trusts