A thoughtfully structured multigenerational strategy can potentially bring family members together around a common objective — building assets, creating income, protecting financial independence, and giving future generations a stronger starting point in life.

Whether the goal is to help your children buy their first home, create additional retirement security, build an investment portfolio, or ultimately leave a meaningful financial legacy, the decisions you make today can have consequences well beyond your own retirement.

This is about more than superannuation. It’s about what your family wants its wealth to achieve.

The Question We Encourage Families to Ask

“What could we build together over the next 10, 20 or 30 years that gives each generation more choices than the one before it?”

A property portfolio may be one component of that strategy. But the objective isn’t to simply accumulate properties. It’s to build an asset base capable of creating both wealth and income over time — because you can’t eat equity. Ultimately, wealth needs to translate into the income, choices and financial security your family wants.

Most Families Plan One Retirement at a Time

Traditional retirement planning tends to focus on “how much do I need to retire?” A multigenerational approach asks a bigger question: “what can our family build over multiple decades?” Instead of looking at each generation in isolation, families may consider how:

Your Super Isn’t Just About Your Retirement

For many families, superannuation and investment assets represent decades of effort. So why think about them only in terms of one person’s retirement? A multigenerational strategy considers how today’s decisions could potentially:

Where Can Property Fit?

This is where properT network has a particularly relevant role. For some families, investment property may form part of a multigenerational wealth strategy. The emphasis should not be on simply buying more property — it should be on selecting investment-grade property that’s appropriate for the relevant investor, strategy, timeframe and risk profile. That might involve capital growth, rental income, cash flow, equity creation, portfolio diversification, and eventually, retirement income.

The property is a vehicle. The family outcome is the destination.

Imagine What Starting 20 Years Earlier Could Mean

Imagine parents who begin building an investment portfolio while their children are young. Over time:

By the time the children become financially independent, they may not simply inherit money. They may inherit a family financial framework.

That’s the difference between leaving an inheritance and leaving a foundation.

How properT Network Can Help

Our role isn’t to provide the family’s legal, tax or regulated financial advice. Our role is to help with the property investment component of the strategy. We can help families understand the property opportunity, assess investment-grade property, compare property options, model rental income and cash flow, assess capital-growth fundamentals, consider portfolio fit, identify opportunities appropriate to the strategy, and work alongside the family’s existing professional advisers.

The conversation should begin with: “what do we want our family’s wealth to achieve?”

A multigenerational SMSF strategy needs to comply with the relevant superannuation, tax, legal and estate-planning requirements. Your family should obtain appropriate advice regarding SMSF trustee structures, investment strategy, contribution rules, pension arrangements, estate planning, tax, succession, asset ownership, related-party transactions, and property acquisition structures. These are important. But they’re not where the conversation should begin — and simply adding family members to one SMSF doesn’t itself create a financial advantage. The ATO requires the fund’s investment strategy to reflect the actual circumstances and objectives of its members, whatever the fund’s structure.

Can Your Fund Actually Include the Next Generation?

Since 1 July 2021, an SMSF can have up to six members — up from four previously. In practice, this means a fund can include a couple and their adult children, all as members and trustees (or directors of a corporate trustee) of the same fund. The ATO’s guide to SMSF trustee structures sets out the requirements in full — note that some state and territory laws limit the number of trustees a trust can have to fewer than six, which is one reason a corporate trustee is often the more practical structure for a larger fund.

Family SMSFs remain uncommon — ATO statistics show the large majority of SMSFs have only one or two members, with funds of five or six members making up a very small fraction of the total.

For families who do structure this way, the appeal is usually practical rather than sentimental: pooled capital gives the fund scale to hold larger assets, including property, that a smaller balance couldn’t support alone. When older members move into pension phase, younger members who are still contributing mean the fund doesn’t necessarily need to sell assets to fund pension payments — a real advantage for a fund holding an illiquid asset like property.

The Trade-offs Worth Understanding

A multigenerational fund isn’t simply a bigger version of a two-person fund. Every member is a trustee, which means every member carries the same legal responsibility for the fund’s compliance — including adult children, who take on real obligations, not just an entitlement. Where the fund borrows, individual members (including adult children) may need to personally guarantee the arrangement. Different generations typically have very different risk appetites and time horizons, which can make agreeing on a single investment strategy genuinely difficult. And running family finances jointly changes the nature of a family relationship — worth an honest conversation before it becomes a source of friction rather than a source of strength.

Planning for What Happens Next: Reversionary Pensions

A reversionary pension is a nomination made when a pension starts, naming a dependant (typically a spouse) who will automatically continue receiving the pension if the member dies — no decision required from the remaining trustees at what is inevitably a difficult time. The ATO’s guide to what happens when an SMSF member dies covers the trustees’ obligations in full. The nominated person must be a genuine “pension dependant” at the time of death — broadly a spouse, a child under 18, a financial dependant, or someone in an interdependency relationship with the member.

Binding Death Benefit Nominations

Where a reversionary pension isn’t in place, or covers only part of the fund, a binding death benefit nomination directs how the remainder is paid. To be valid, it generally needs to be in writing, signed by the member, and witnessed by two people who aren’t named beneficiaries. Under most SMSF trust deeds, a binding nomination lapses after three years unless renewed — though SMSFs have flexibility retail funds typically don’t: many SMSF trust deeds can be written to allow a non-lapsing binding nomination, remaining valid until the member changes or revokes it. Whether your fund’s deed allows this is worth checking specifically, not assuming.

How Death Benefits Are Actually Taxed

This is where a lot of legacy planning goes wrong — people assume super passes on tax-free, and it depends entirely on who receives it. Under the ATO’s rules on superannuation death benefits, a benefit paid to a tax dependant — broadly a spouse, a former spouse, a child under 18, or someone in a genuine interdependency relationship — is generally received tax-free. A benefit paid to a non-dependant for tax purposes — most commonly a financially independent adult child — is generally taxed on the taxable component. This is exactly the distinction that matters most for a multigenerational fund: money passing to a spouse and money passing to an adult child can be taxed completely differently, even from the same fund. Moneysmart’s guide to claiming a super death benefit is a useful plain-language companion for family members navigating this after a death.

Where Property Fits Into This, Practically

Property is often the natural centrepiece of a multigenerational fund — it’s the kind of asset a larger, pooled fund balance can support that a smaller individual balance often can’t, and it’s genuinely something a family can hold and pass down across pension and accumulation phases simultaneously. The same funding-path questions apply as they would for any SMSF property decision — Residential, Commercial, or Fractional — just considered against a longer, multi-generation timeframe rather than one member’s retirement alone.

General information only. SMSF, superannuation, taxation and estate planning rules are complex and depend on individual circumstances, and are subject to change. This page is not personal financial, tax or legal advice. Obtain appropriate advice from a licensed financial adviser, SMSF specialist, accountant and solicitor before making decisions about SMSF membership, death benefit nominations, reversionary pensions or estate planning.