Category W & G Lawyers

This article was written by Nancy Wang Principal Solicitor at W & G Lawyers.

You order a custom kitchen, a caravan, a boat or a piece of made-to-order furniture. You pay a series of instalments while it is being built, and you will not receive it until you have paid the last one. Some months later your circumstances change and you decide you no longer want it.

Most people assume that because the goods were never delivered, the money paid should come back. The consumer law does give you a right to cancel in that situation, and it does require the supplier to refund what you have paid. It also allows the supplier to keep a cancellation fee, and a recent Queensland District Court decision shows that the fee can be a very substantial sum even where the buyer has done nothing wrong. This article explains in general terms how these arrangements work, where the money goes if you cancel, and what to look for in the contract before you sign.

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This article was written by Grace Blake Solicitor at W & G Lawyers.

Most people know they should have a will. Far fewer have thought about who would pay the mortgage, deal with the bank or speak to a hospital if they were suddenly unable to do so themselves. A will only operates after death. A power of attorney deals with the time before death, when you are alive but cannot, or would prefer not to, act for yourself.

This article explains in general terms how powers of attorney work in Queensland. It covers the two types of power of attorney, when your attorney’s authority may start, whether the document needs to be registered, who you can appoint, and what an attorney can and must do.

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W & G Lawyers Participates in the John Paul College R U OK? Day Community Event

Recently, W & G Lawyers was pleased to join John Paul College for its R U OK? Day community event.

Yellow posters, small giveaways and simple prompts about how to start a conversation may all seem light-hearted. But behind the event is an important message:

Caring for someone can begin with one very simple question: “Are you OK?”

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This article was written by Nancy Wang Principal Solicitor at W & G Lawyers.

Most small and family businesses in Queensland are run through a company owned by the same people who manage it, and it is easy to think of the company as simply “us”. The law does not see it that way. Under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), a company is a separate legal person, and there are several ways in which it could cease to exist, or in which its owners could lose control of it, sometimes without realising it is happening. This article explains, in general terms, how a company may be deregistered and how control may pass to an administrator, a liquidator or a receiver.

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This article was written by Nancy Wang Pricipal Solicitor and Grace Blake Solicitor at W & G Lawyers. 

Most residential contracts signed in Queensland are “subject to building and pest”. Buyers often see the condition as a safety net that lets them walk away if the inspection turns up anything they do not like; sellers often assume it lets the buyer walk away for almost nothing. Neither view is quite right. The condition has its own mechanics, its own deadlines and a requirement that the buyer act reasonably. This article explains in general terms how it works, what a report may and may not tell you, and where the line could fall when a report reveals only minor issues.

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This article was written by Nancy Wang Principal Solicitor at W & G Lawyers.

A couple sits across the desk from us with a set of architect’s drawings, a builder they like, and a decision to make. The builder has offered two ways of contracting. Under the first, the builder will name a price and stand behind it. Under the second, the builder will charge whatever the work actually costs, plus a margin of 15 or 20 per cent, and has provided an “estimate” that looks reassuringly close to their budget. The builder prefers the second, and says it is fairer because nobody pays for risk that never materialises.

We see this conversation more often than we used to. Volatile material prices, trade shortages and the collapse of several well-known Queensland builders have made contractors reluctant to commit to fixed prices, and cost plus contracting — once reserved for bespoke or uncertain projects — is now being proposed for ordinary suburban homes. This article explains how Queensland law treats the two contracts differently, and why the choice matters more than most homeowners appreciate.

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Many Chinese families see making a will as something to deal with “when I’m older”. But in Queensland, if you do not make a will, the law effectively decides for you — and the result may be very different from what you would have wanted.

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This article was written by Grace Blake Solicitor at W & G Lawyers.

As society becomes increasingly digital, estate planning needs to evolve with it.

A modern estate can extend far beyond the traditional assets we think about when preparing a Will. Today, a person’s financial and personal affairs may include online share trading accounts, cryptocurrency, digital bank accounts, cloud-stored photographs and documents, social media accounts, online businesses, intellectual property and valuable digital records.

But what happens to those assets when you die?

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On 25 August, the W & G Lawyers team came together for this month’s Team Building activity. This time we headed to Zone Bowling for a relaxed — and slightly competitive — game of bowling, a welcome change of pace from our busy working lives.

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This article was co-authored by Nancy Wang Pricipal Solicitor and Jialin Liu Solicitor at W & G Lawyers. 

Consider a situation we now see in our office with some regularity. A professional woman in her forties sells an apartment she bought years before she met her partner, adds her savings, and pays the entire price of a new family home. The title — for reasons that seemed sensible at the time, or for no articulated reason at all — goes into joint names, or into her partner’s name alone. The relationship later ends, and she asks the question every family lawyer dreads answering in a single sentence: whose house is it?

The honest answer is that it depends on which body of law is asked, and how long the relationship lasted. The equitable doctrines — resulting trusts, constructive trusts and the presumption of advancement — give one answer. The Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), substantially rewritten with effect from 10 June 2025, gives another. This article works through both, and explains why the passage of time quietly transfers power from the first to the second.

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