We characterize the weak-star point of continuity property for subspaces of dual spaces with separable predual and we deduce that the weak-star point of continuity property is determined by subspaces with a Schauder basis in the natural setting of dual spaces of separable Banach spaces. As a consequence of the above characterization we get that a dual space satisfies the Radon-Nikodym property if, and only if, every seminormalized topologically weak-star null tree has a boundedly complete branch, which improves some results in [3] obtained for the separable case. Also, as a consequence of the above characterization, the following result obtained in [8] is deduced: every seminormalized basic sequence in a Banach space with the point of continuity property has a boundedly complete subsequence.