Australia’s legal profession is on the eve of its most significant regulatory shift in two decades. From 1 July 2026, the expansion of the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regime will bring legal professionals into scope as designated “gatekeeper” professions and for wills & estates practitioners, the implications are both immediate and far-reaching.
The Tranche 2 reforms reflect a broader global reckoning with the movement of wealth across generations. Regulators, guided by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), have reached a clear conclusion: that the transfer of assets, property and beneficial ownership through professional services represents one of the most significant vectors for financial crime in modern economies. And estates practice sits squarely at the centre of that concern.
For decades, the estates lawyer’s role has been understood primarily through the lens of the client relationship; administering wishes, protecting beneficiaries, navigating family complexity. The Tranche 2 reforms ask the profession to hold a wider view. They position estates practitioners as active participants in the integrity of Australia’s financial system.
That is a meaningful elevation of professional responsibility. And the firms that recognise it as such, rather than treating it purely as a regulatory burden, will be better positioned to lead through it.
The obligations themselves are targeted. Legal professionals are only captured where they provide a “designated service”, one that directly advances a transaction at higher risk of financial crime. Drafting Wills, including Wills with testamentary trusts and preparing enduring powers of attorney remain outside the regime. But where a matter involves the sale or transfer of property, the restructuring of a body corporate or legal arrangement, the control of client assets or the creation of trusts beyond the testamentary context, the obligations are real and the expectations are clear.
The reforms are most consequential in four areas: real estate transactions, entity transactions involving significant ownership or control, the management of client money and corporate or control-related services. Across each of these, the common thread is the same, wherever an estates practitioner sits at the point where assets change hands or control is exercised, the gatekeeper obligation applies.
This is not incidental. It reflects a deliberate regulatory judgment that intergenerational wealth transfer is an area of genuine vulnerability, and that the professionals who facilitate it have both the visibility and the responsibility to act as a line of defence.
From 1 July 2026, firms providing designated services must be enrolled with AUSTRAC, conduct client due diligence, maintain records and report annually on compliance. Where reasonable grounds exist to suspect a client is not who they claim to be, or where a suspicious matter arises, reporting obligations are triggered. Compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) applies in parallel.
The administrative weight of these obligations is real. But the more significant shift is cultural. Firms that approach AML/CTF compliance as a box-ticking exercise will find it burdensome and disruptive. Firms that embed it into the fabric of how they onboard clients, manage matters and oversee risk will find it becomes a source of professional confidence and a marker of the standards their clients can expect.
Here is the perspective worth sitting with: the firms that move earliest and most deliberately to meet these obligations will be most trusted. In an area of law defined by the weight of human vulnerability and the complexity of family wealth, that trust is a commercial and professional differentiator of the highest order.
The Tranche 2 reforms are arriving whether the profession is ready or not. The question is whether to respond in a way that simply satisfies the regulator, or in a way that genuinely strengthens your practice.
The gatekeepers who lead through this moment will define what estates practice looks like on the other side of it.
Danielle is a Wills & Estates solicitor working in the Estates team at InfoTrack. She is an affiliate member of the Society of Estate and Trust Practitioners (STEP) and has a Master of Laws (Applied Law) majoring in Wills & Estates and Estate Planning. Prior to joining InfoTrack, she worked in Estate Planning, Estate Administration and Estate Litigation on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
