Margaret Arthur
Special Counsel, Hopgoodganim Lawyers
Biography
Margaret is a Special Counsel with Hopgoodganim Lawyers and specialises in the area of Succession law and Elder Law.
In 2015 Margaret achieved accreditation in Succession law and is one of only 45 accredited Succession law specialists in Queensland.
Margaret’s main areas of practice are:
- Disputes arising out of Wills and Estates including family provision claims;
- All aspects of Estate Planning including simple and complex Wills, Superannuation and Trusts;
- Appointment as an Independent Administrator or Litigation Guardian in Estate administrations and disputes;
- Executorship issues and Estate administrations;
- All aspects of Guardianship & Administration matters including applications to the Queensland Civil & Administrative Tribunal (QCAT);
- Intra-family matters such as co-residency arrangements, granny-flat agreements and reviews of Retirement Village and Residential Aged Care Agreements;
- Disputes arising out of Enduring Powers of Attorney and compensation claims for breach of duties.
Most recently, Margaret was included in The Best Lawyers™ in Australia 2024 for Health and Aged Care Law and recognised in Doyle’s Guide 2023 Leading Wills, Estates & Succession Planning Lawyers – Queensland.
Margaret is the Chair of the Health & Disability Committee of the Qld Law Society, and a member of the Qld Law Society’s Succession law Committee. Margaret is also a member of the Management Committee of the Caxton Legal Centre.
Elder abuse and coercive control reform in Australia
Older people are victims of coercive control and the abuse inflicted on them is most commonly at the hands of an adult child. Yet despite this, the abuse of older people, and relationships outside of an intimate partner setting, are either excluded or given minimal focus in the more recent coercive control reforms across Australia.
This is a problem because:
1. elder abuse is on the increase and as our population ages, we can expect it to increase;
2. psychological abuse is the most common sub-type of elder abuse in Australia;
3. elder abuse is serious, yet there is a reluctance to report it;
4. there is a lack of awareness of coercive control in an elder abuse setting;
5. perpetrators of elder abuse are rarely brought to account.
Our paper (https://www.hopgoodganim.com.au/page/knowledge-centre/publications/elder-abuse-and-coercive-control-reform-in-australia), examines in detail, where elder abuse sits within broader recent discussions in Australia about coercive control law and policy reform and, together with case examples, seeks to encourage key stakeholders, including national and state and territory governments, to continue to include elder abuse in these important reforms.