Boylson & Collyer Solicitors

Boylson & Collyer Solicitors Boylson & Collyer Solicitors have provided professional legal services to the Scenic Rim and broader Queensland area for the last 40 years.

04/03/2025

Due to the approaching cyclone, we may need to close our office at short notice to allow staff to get home safely. If you cannot get into contact with us, please try again later. And please look after yourselves and your friends and neighbours during this time.

Dawn service this morning at Boonah was under a beautiful moon.
25/04/2024

Dawn service this morning at Boonah was under a beautiful moon.

We will remember them ... our Anzac display for tomorrow.
24/04/2024

We will remember them ... our Anzac display for tomorrow.

Anzac Day 2023We will remember them ...My two grandfathers, Bill McNamara and Lawrence Conway. Both were wounded, thank...
24/04/2023

Anzac Day 2023
We will remember them ...
My two grandfathers, Bill McNamara and Lawrence Conway. Both were wounded, thankfully returned home to Ipswich and had families. Lawrence's son Mick married Bill's daughter Clare. Clare attended the dawn service all her life at the Woodend war memorial where her father's name was recorded, until she became too frail. She joined Bill and her mother Maggie and sisters and brother last September 2022.
Lest we forget.

17/09/2022

Electronic conveyancing
All land records in Australia are kept in government titles offices in each state. The government had very strict rules about title records to protect it from fraud. To transfer land from one owner to another, people had to sign a Transfer form and lodge it in the titles office to be processed. The staff had to locate the original big book holding that particular lot, find the right page and handwrite the new owner on the page and issue a duplicate of that page for the new owner as evidence of ownership.

In the 1980s and 1990s a land boom resulted in long delays in getting transfers recorded. So the Qld titles office changed to an online system, where all records are kept online and there are now no paper titles. (People often ask us where their "Deed" is but there are no Deeds any more.)

Ten years ago the titles offices introduced online conveyancing, to allow registered people such as solicitors and banks to lodge their forms directly online into the titles office so the transfer happens virtually instantly. About 70% of transactions are now done online. However some of our clients insisted on using the old paper lodgement, some solicitors were unwilling to change and some people wanted to self-act and prepare and lodge the paper forms themselves.

But it has just been announced that from next February 2023, all lodgements of transfers must be done online. After ten years of experience, we are ready, but the general public may notice a few changes, in particular that people will no longer be able to act in their own conveyancing.

Statutory DeclarationsMany people have signed a Statutory Declaration (or "Stat Dec" for short) at some stage. It can ...
30/04/2022

Statutory Declarations
Many people have signed a Statutory Declaration (or "Stat Dec" for short) at some stage. It can give evidence such as "I saw ..." but is often used for declarations such as "The correct spelling of my name is ...". Each state has a law which authorises swearing a declaration: in Qld it is the 1867 Oaths Act and in Commonwealth law it is the 1959 Statutory Declarations Act.

Signing a Stat Dec was very strictly controlled eg it had to be witnessed by a JP, solicitor or Commissioner for Declarations. But this has now been revolutionised and brought into the digital age. From today, 30 April 2022, new laws allow statutory declarations to be made in electronic form, signed electronically, and witnessed over audio visual link, as an alternative to the traditional physical approach. New forms have also been issued to allow this.

So if you need to sign a Stat Dec today or in the future, make sure you use the new forms which are headed at the top "Form 1 ... Version 2: approved for sue from 30 April 2022" - see attached image.

26/03/2022

Abolition of the Upper House
My last post said the abolition of the Upper House in this state (ie the Legislative Council) was an important event. I'm sure most people havn't even heard of it and so would wonder about its significance.

The end of the Upper House gave the lower house (the Legislative Assembly) power to pass legislation without any interference. Instead a "committee system" allows committees to examine laws in detail before they are passed to make sure there are no unintended consequences.

We will have a federal election soon for the upper and lower houses in the federal government. There the upper house (the Senate) is made up of 12 senators from each state, regardless of the population of the state. That means a populous state such as NSW has equal voting power with a small state like Tasmania. That was designed by the writers of the constitution to ensure that small population states were not dominated by the others. Unfortunately that is not how the system works today as the politicians vote along party lines rather than to protect state interests.

21/03/2022

Queensland’s Legislative Council
Tomorrow (23 March) marks the centenary of an important event in Queensland history – the abolition of the state Legislative Council (the upper house).

In Britain, there were two houses of parliament, the upper house (the House of Lords) and the lower house (the House of Commons). Obviously the only way to be a member of the upper house was to be born a Lord and then you were a Lord for life.

That parliamentary system was transplanted into Queensland, with an upper house called the Legislative Council and a lower house called the Legislative Assembly. Each house had roughly equal power. As there were no local Lords, members of the Legislative Council were appointed by the state governor for life.

The shearer’s strikes of the 1890’s led to the birth of the Labor party. On 1 June 1915 the first Labour government was sworn in and immediately introduced reforms. Those reforms were often blocked by the conservative upper house. The Labor party planned to abolish it.

There was a lot of debate at the time about what to do with the upper house eg the Country Party proposed that the members of the Legislative Council be elected but only by property owners not all Queenslanders.

In October 1919 Edward “Red Ted” Theodore became Premier at the age of 34. In late 1921 Mr Theodore introduced a bill to abolish the Legislative Council. The bill was passed in the lower house 51 to 14. A Labor “suicide squad” was appointed to the Council with the sole purpose to abolish it. Opponents appealed to the King to stop the abolition but that was rejected.

The Legislative Council ceased to exist on 23 March 1922 (one year ago tomorrow) and Qld has had only house (ie unicameral), the Legislative Assembly for the last century while all other states in Australia and the federal government retain the upper and lower houses (bicameral). The conservative parties planned to re-introduce the upper house but never did.

We had a visitor today, climbing our sign!
02/03/2022

We had a visitor today, climbing our sign!

25/01/2022

New Contracts No. 2
Last week I pointed out a provision in the new contract that states that the seller must ensure the home being sold must have smoke alarms that meet the standard in the legislation. Another provision may have more serious ramifications.

Queensland contracts always included the ancient legal principle that “time is of the essence” ie that the two sides MUST comply with the dates in the contract. If one was late, then the other may be able to impose a penalty or even terminate the contract. There have been media reports of the last year or so about buyers who lose their purchase and their deposit because their bank was not ready on the settlement date, so they could not settle the contract.

The new contract has tried to resolve this by allowing either side to extend the settlement date of the contract by up to a week. They can do this right up to 4pm on the settlement day. That will allow those with a tardy bank to take an extra week to get ready to settle. (It will also allow bank to be even more tardy than they have been.)

While the intention is good, the consequences are immense. The buyer may be sitting on the side of the road with their removal vans full of furniture, and suddenly find they cannot move in for another week. Others may have vacated their rental unit and find they are suddenly homeless. The seller may have signed another contract (eg to enter a retirement village or buy a mobile home) and find they have no money and those contracts cannot be extended.
The lesson is, when people sign a contract they can no longer rely on the settlement date stated in the contract.

18/01/2022

New house contracts
I've written before that a contract is binding once it's signed, unless there is something that makes it conditional or invalid. Many people sign house contracts without getting legal advice on the basis that it is "just a standard contract." But standard contracts can include terms you are not aware of.

In two days time, 20 January 2022, a new house contract will be introduced in Qld. It includes a new standard term (7.8) that says that the house must have compliant smoke alarms installed. If they are not installed by settlement of the contract then the buyer can withhold 0.15% of the purchase price. While that might seem a small percent, it is $150 per $100k so for a $500,000 house it is $750 and for a $600,000 house it is $900.

So before listing a house for sale, a seller should make sure that they have smoke alarms that comply with legislation or they may be penalised at settlement.

07/01/2022

Christmas break
The media has been reporting over the last year that property market has set new records for both the number of sales and the price. We experienced that record-breaking event with about one third more files than the previous year, ie 2021 was up 130% on the previous year (2020) which was higher than the year before (2019).

And while we were coping with increased work, we worked from home for the first time. This was made possible through many services moving on-line over the last few years. In particular, titles office, banks and solicitors now use an online portal called PEXA to settle contracts, instead of the old-fashioned settlements that needed people to physically meet and exchange documents and cheques.

In December it became clear that Qld would experience a huge increase in COVID when the borders re-opened. So this office decided to have a longer Christmas break and re-open on Monday 17 January both to give the staff a well-earned rest and to avoid the worst of the pandemic. This has now come to pass.

So from next week we will restrict visits to our office. We will of course monitor and respond to emails and phone calls. We ask for your understanding and assure you that our history of excellent customer service will not be compromised.

We wish you all the best for 2022 and especially that together we are all safe.

Address

16 Yeates Avenue
Boonah, QLD
4310

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+61754631611

Website

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Boylson & Collyer Solicitors

Boylson & Collyer have decades of experience in many areas of the law, in particular conveyancing (buying and selling houses, businesses, farms, units and water allocations), property law, leasing, commercial, Wills and estates and Enduring Powers of Attorney. Our friendly and experienced staff and legal practitioners are available to help you with all your legal needs.

Our office is conveniently located on the ground floor with plenty of free parking at our doorstep.