Tara (00:50):
Hello. Thank you for tuning in. It is Tara Lucke. We are up to episode number 70 of the podcast, and today I want to talk to you about the Letter of Wishes. I am sitting here in my office. It is the first week of January that I'm actually recording this episode and I have been thinking about my estate plan and some changes that I wanted to make to my personal Letter of Wishes. So I do actually end up updating my own Letter of Wishes quite frequently. I updated it in 2025. I did a big update in 2023 when I was expecting my second son. And as I think of little things and people in this community ask questions or make comments that spark ideas for me, I sort of like to come back and always filter them into my Letter of Wishes when I think they're appropriate.
(01:51):
So I have just updated it. I've sent it to my husband to see if he wants to add anything, and it's been an interesting exercise because some of the things that I'm updating are personal wishes and others are just procedural. It's actually crazy to me how frequently things change. We refinanced our mortgages 2025 I think. So I had to update all that. We moved financial advisors, we moved accountants. Our contact at our accounting firm left at the end of 2025, so I have to update that. So it is just kind of crazy how things keep changing. My youngest got into a different school than he was previously going to, and yeah, so I feel like the Letter of Wishes is humbling me always because it's never finished and I'm also learning so much about what needs to go into it. So I will fully admit that when I was a child free lawyer working in a top tier firm, I'd been a lawyer for 10 years practising in estate planning, and I really didn't appreciate the value and importance of a Letter of Wishes and what that can bring to the estate planning process.
(03:13):
And I think even now I will probably not have completed enough information in the Letter of Wishes, and I think there's a lot of lived experience that goes into making a really good Letter of Wishes. So I fully acknowledge that this is a learning curve, but you've got to start somewhere. So I wanted to just talk about it as an estate planning tool and give some examples and let you know about some of the resources that we have at the Art of Estate Planning. So what is the Letter of Wishes? It's a morally binding, so non-legal document that accompanies the technical estate planning documents like your will. And for me, I really think it's meant to be a letter that you write in your own words without the legal jargon for your loved ones and your controllers to read, to fill in all the gaps.
(04:16):
Because when you look at the will, it doesn't really say anything about where the spare key is, how to find the important documentation, how to get into your laptop, get into your phone, any of that stuff. It doesn't leave love letters or any kind of emotional guidance and support to your children or your loved ones. Reading the will for someone who has lost a loved one and reading their will. It's very harsh, strict document without any of your personality. So I feel like the Letter of Wishes is designed to inject your personality, to speak from the grave, give your people a roadmap on what they need to do to get an insight into how to unravel and tidy up your life, but also to speak from the heart about anything you wanted to let them know there's actually no rules about a Letter of Wishes.
(05:17):
So you might have several Letter of Wishes, you might make one for your executives and trustees, and you might make a different one for your spouse and children, or you could combine it all together. There's no rules probably there is one rule perhaps, which is just be careful about how you reference the Letter of Wishes in a will because you might find that the Letter of Wishes needs to be submitted with the probate application. And there'll be a question about does the Letter of Wishes also contain the testamentary wishes? So keep anything that should go in a will in the will, not the Letter of Wishes. Don't try and gift property or change control roles or anything like that. The Letter of Wishes is just speaking from the heart. And also I've sort of reached a position after a lot of consideration that I no longer reference the Letter of Wishes in the will because I don't want probate applications to be requisitioned.
(06:17):
I don't want the Letter of Wishes to have to be included as a testamentary document in probate. That's a public document. So that's probably some word of caution. But besides that, your format and layout of the Letter of Wishes really doesn't require any particular compliance with any rules. I do think it's a good idea to get it signed and dated. I don't think you need to worry about witnessing or special witnesses. And the beautiful thing about the Letter of Wishes, as I sort of said before, because it's not requiring formal witnessing requirements and you're not putting proper testamentary directions in there, you can update it all the time whenever you want. So your clients can be empowered to keep adding and working on the document as they like. Every time they get to a version, they're happy, they can print it out, sign and date it, send it back to you to keep with the original will and just keep it updated and fresh.
(07:17):
So it's a great tool for keeping your estate plan like the detail behind the proper structure, fresh and current. So I want to guess just sort of say that I find the Letter of Wishes very emotional, my own Letter of Wishes, of course, not the concept of a Letter of Wishes, but actually sitting down and writing the Letter of Wishes is really kind of scary and I even just feel like heavy in my heart space just thinking about it because of how important this document is. And what I visualise is my sons being teenagers, having lost their mom, and this is a document that they can read to sort of understand how much I loved them. I also visualise my executives, particularly if my husband and I both passed away trying to work out our life and sought everything that they need to. And yes, there's an element where that's just going to be a pain in the neck for them and a complete nightmare, but also of my two little boys who are two and five just sitting there and needing grownups to take control and manage things for them and understand how everything is structured.
(08:48):
So I feel like there's two real purposes in my personal Letter of Wishes. So in terms of just a brain dump of every single detail that they might need to know, I'm good at that. I am really good at detail, so that's fine. It's the emotional aspect for my husband and my kids, which is tough. So to give you an idea of what is in my personal Letter of Wishes and I've used for mine our precedent that comes with our estate planning precedent packages, and I'd say my Letter of Wishes is about 10 pages long, and I actually want to mention that we also have a longer form Letter of Wishes, work book precedent, which is actually what I recommend over and above the Letter of Wishes precedent that comes in my precedent. So why do we have two precedents? The Letter of Wishes that comes with our precedent packages is like a shorter form document for clients who probably needs something in place but don't really want to tackle this as a big exercise.
(09:55):
And then one of our beautiful members of our community, Bernadette Terry, of Great Southern Wills, had actually created for her clients a few years ago, a very extensive Letter of Wishes workbook. I'm just looking at the template here. It's like 57 pages and it covers everything. And if you have seen on my socials, this is like a four booklet that is designed for you as a law firm owner or lawyer to put your firm's branding on customise and turn it into a beautiful value add for your clients where they have this booklet that they can fill in by hand or maybe they can type into it if they want, but it's like a bound booklet, beautiful branding of your firm sitting there that they can go through and fill in the details for. They don't have to fill in everything. There might be things that aren't relevant like pets, for instance.
(10:58):
I don't have any pets, so I wouldn't fill in that section. But then there's a lot of other sections that's really important, covering everything. So we have that is available on a white label basis. You buy the digital file and then it's yours. You can get it your brand designer or graphic designer to make it beautiful. And then a lot of our law firm clients at the Art of Estate planning get it bound up and then include it as a bonus for their estate planning clients. So I actually wrote my own Letter of Wishes before Bernadette's workbook was available as a resource for the art of Estate planning clients, and I've sort of gone too deep on mine, so I should probably at one stage redo it and use the workbook. But at the moment, I'm still using the original template. So I'll talk you through about what's in my Letter of Wishes and then also what's in the workbook.
(12:00):
So the first thing I've got in the Letter of Wishes is directions to the trustees and pointers of the testamentary trusts in our wills. So my husband and I have made a joint Letter of Wishes you can do one per couple or each couple write their own. The reality, which I think our situation is quite common is my husband was not going to ever do this, so I wrote one for both of us, and I get him to just add what he wants, but he's not going to sit down and do this as a comprehensive exercise without a lot of controlling. So it's just easier if I do it. So that's why we have a joint one. So yeah, in that we've basically said the age that we want our controllers to step down from controlling the trust and hand over to our kids. I've reminded them why we're using the testamentary trust.
(12:50):
I've reminded them that if they need to withdraw capital from the trust, I want that to be done as a loan and ideally a secured loan or just giving the control of the trust to the children once they've reached that set age, not as capital distributions, I'm letting them know who our advisory team are, that we've got life insurance and super accounts, and that our financial advisors have all of those details. I've actually got a lot in here about our children, and this has taken me several years to write and work up because it's a really emotional thinking that you're not going to be there for your kids. So we've nominated our, well, we've confirmed our Guardian nomination in our will and explained why we've made that choice and anticipated that there might be some people in our family who thought they would be a suitable guardian and explaining why we've chosen the people we have chosen and the reality of that with us having family in different towns and spread around.
(14:04):
So for instance, we've sort of said it's really important that the children stay in our town that we currently live in. And this was actually really hard to do too because we've only lived in Bundaberg for three years. So we did have a time where we weren't sure where our children should go. So this has been something we've updated. Do we want them to go back to our old home on the Gold Coast, but as we are building our community here, is it right for them to stay here, especially with their schooling and all the friends that they have? So we've had to think deeply about that. Then also making sure that our family members who aren't in Bundaberg still get to see our children regularly, and we've offered for our testament tree trust to actually pay for their travel and accommodation costs so that for our children to go see them, but also for those family members to come to see us, including making it easy as possible with flights instead of driving or whatever it is, just to try to ease any barrier that might affect those relationships.
(15:22):
Also, in terms of our guardians, we've really had to think about what their needs could be in terms of accommodating our two children in their home. Just adding two more children is a big deal for most families, including like an extension of the house, buying a new house, a car. Our children currently go to a different school than the school that the children of our guardians go to and thinking about, so our school has private school fees, do we offer to pay for the private school fees from the trust for the children of the guardians so all the kids can go to the same school if that's what they feel is appropriate, our wish that we really want our children to continue on in their particular school that they're already enrolled in. So thinking about all those logistics, and again, it's just a wish, but also guidance to our financial controllers about where is the line for distributing income and who should be able to benefit.
(16:36):
So I've obviously made sure that the people who might need to benefit our beneficiaries and giving our trustees guidance that might not just be our two children who do get a benefit, but also don't take the piss and take advantage of it. We've got to preserve the inheritance. But the reality is if our guardians have as much of a buffer and a smooth transition for our children to be incorporated into their household, then that is going to have a direct effect on our children's wellbeing as well. So yeah, there's a fair bit to think about and to document. And even if you've had conversations, I think having it written down in writing just helps reduce the arguments, intentions that can arise because with administering a testamentary trust and acting in the role of a trustee, it's just inherent that the internal biases of your trustees will be brought into the way they exercise their discretion.
(17:44):
And so if you've got somebody who is conservative with money or a spend thrift or has different values around education or living or that type of thing, I think if you can have it written down exactly what you want to happen, then that helps everybody have an impartial discussion about what we would've wanted, not what they think we would've wanted with their own interpretation on that. Another example is sport. So our sons are both very sporty and we have said it's important that they can do as much sport as they want and take their sport to the furtherest levels that they can and that the trust should just pay for all of that, the accommodation, the fees, whatever it costs. I know sport is expensive, but if we're not there, we want the trust to just pay for it all because what we would've done.
(18:45):
So that type of decision, it's so minute, but it just helps make it really clear to set out the life that we envisioned. Now, obviously you need to be able to fund all of this, and we have worked really closely with our financial advisors to make sure that we have a lot of life insurance that will be paid out if we both die or if each of us die, so that I'm not just writing a wishlist of things and then our trustees are there going, who's paying for this? Also, for instance, I've said, if our guardians need to buy a new home to fit our children in, then we actually want some of the funds to be made available from the testamentary trust as a loan that is secured against the property and the repayment of the loan is deferred until the sale of the property.
(19:40):
So work with a lawyer to get this documented and structure it in the best way from an asset protection, but we want that capital to ultimately be returned and also bear in mind the fact that some of not all of that capital can be available and we need to be able to generate an income from the testamentary trust as well. So balancing those needs there. Another thing I've got in here that I, again get quite emotional, but I think it's really important is around this, the love letters to our children. And it's really important for me that if they're orphans or even if just I die, that they have things from me showing how much I love them. So for instance, every birthday I write them a long letter about where they're at and how much I love them and what they're doing, and I've scanned that in and save it on a folder on my computer.
(20:44):
We've got obviously endless photos. I'd record little videos for them about how much I love them so they can hear my voice, and I've got all of that saved in a folder on my computer with our estate planning documents called Love Letters, and I've got that referenced in our Letter of Wishes. And then also the same with the system for my husband's computer, how to get into it, what the exact file location is so that the kids have got all of these resources from us. And then it's also a system that's really easy. So each year and all, whenever we make them, we can just save them in that folder and we know that they'll be easily found. So yeah, I think that type of thing is really important. I've also got in there our values around money that we do want them to get a job and try to learn the value of a good work ethic, but also I want money to be available when it's time for them to buy a home and that this should be a secured interest free loan.
(21:56):
They want to travel. Who pays for that if they're adults and want to have a gap year, who pays for all of that? So just going into that kind of detail. There's no rules about any of this, and I'm sure if I listen back to this in a few years, I'll be like, oh, I was so naive, I didn't even think about X, Y, and Z. So yeah, that's why I mean it's a real work in progress. I've also, my husband and I both run businesses, so we've got a lot of detail in here about the business, who to contact, what to shut down, what can keep going, is anything worth selling? Who to contact out of our friends and our business advisors who might be able to help with sorting this out. I think if I died, my husband might be able to manage it, but I definitely don't think my dad and father-in-law could, I actually don't even know if they really understand the art of estate planning is.
(22:59):
So making sure they know who to contact and get in touch with. Even just things like passwords. We use LastPass, how to get into our computer, how to get into our mobile phones, who are banking with, well financial structures. There's a lot in there that needs to go. I've also got the sentimental gifts in here, our jewellery, we've got special valuations for our jewellery, so where are those saved? And I've got a few artworks that our family members might not realise are valuable. So just pointing that out to them. And then who they might like the organisation we bought them from so that they can try and sell them and not just give them a away to vi's or whatever the funeral arrangements. Cremation and burial, organ donation. I mean, I know with the organ donation you do, it's better to be on the national organ donor, but it doesn't hurt to write it down.
(24:05):
And then things like, where is our safe? Where is the spare key? All of that accounts they need to cancel, people they should contact. So yeah, it's the actual roadmap that accompanies what's in the framework of the will. I want to talk a little bit about the Letter of Wishes workbook, which is a supercharged version of the Letter of Wishes. So this is what Bernadette Terry developed for her clients and licence is to us to make available for other estate planning lawyers. So I'll just read out this paragraph of the introduction to give you an idea. So it says, for my loved ones, if you are reading this book, then I'm either Ill unable to make decisions or I have passed away, and I want to make it easier for you to step into my shoes and guide you. You are not alone. I want to give you as much information as possible to help you do your job.
(25:06):
You have taken on a big responsibility to be my attorney, my medical guardian, my executor, and the guardian of my children. So thank you. This book will help you ensure that there are no disputes in the future and that you know my wishes. So that's the vibe going in, and it starts with even just listing out where are all of the legal documents, who's been appointed, where can we find a digital assets register? So I don't necessarily suggest that being in the Letter of Wishes per se, particularly dealing with crypto. We need a separate plan, but where is it available? The key advisory team, so lawyers, doctor, accountant, financial advisor, insurance broker who's been appointed to the key roles, has particular nominations been made like the organ donut register, advanced healthcare directive wishes about terminally ill, and a framework for that, the enduring power of attorney to bringing attention to that and any other sort of wishes that don't go into that framework.
(26:17):
So both for financial and medical, what the executor should do immediately, the list of people to phone or email guardians, pets, livestock, grain, perishables like business impacts, house plants where the spare key is the alarm code, the car keys, the shed keys, the business contacts, the non-urgent stuff to contact after the funeral, just sorting that out. The utilities, the subscriptions, you can literally write them all down if you want to. You don't necessarily have to, but yes, some people really like just having the structure of doing that. There's a lot of guidance in here like proforma guidance we've written just to help the executor wrap their head around the role checklists for them. There's then like an asset inventory, assets and liabilities going so that they can fill it in, build a family tree, name everyone's contact, details in the family tree, all the trusts and companies and structures, charities that they might be involved in.
(27:29):
Friends, where's all of the test status like ID details and then going into funeral wishes, things you might like in your obituary. Directions for the guardians, again, lots of information there, whether there's a particular religious denomination, the schooling, whether we want them to live, people who should be involved and not involved in the children's upbringing, medical needs, extracurricular protocol, all those details. So even things like chores, they're expected to do what the policy is for social media, overseas trips, health things the same. It's not as long, but very similar for pets as well. Businesses, lots of details about personal effects and belongings, wishes for the children about what guidance to them about what you might like them to do with their inheritance. So it's very thorough for someone who's got no idea where to start. This workbook is excellent because there's a lot of tick the boxes or fill in this section.
(28:46):
So a lot of the hard work is done. You're not sitting there with a blank slate wondering, oh my God, where do I begin and what do I even say? It's sort of like something you can work on over time and keep building on. There's explanation about testamentary trusts and trust controllers in their space for writing letters of handwritten letters or putting letters in that you've typed up. So it is an incredible resource. It's available to purchase on a white label basis from the Art of Estate planning with a huge thank you to Bernadette for creating this resource for our community. And it is just a beautiful add-on a way to get your clients to take ownership and invest in their side of the estate planning process. I lastly, just wanted to mention a couple of things that I've seen in letters of wishes from clients over the years that have really stuck with me that I have thought were really inspirational.
(29:49):
So for instance, I've seen a father write to his teenage sons about the books and mentors that he has taken inspiration from over his life. So books that he would recommend his children to read once they're adults like Tony Robbins or whoever it was, that type of thing. People's philosophies that have shaped their beliefs that they might like to take inspiration on. Family recipes going in there, just even details about who gets which item of jewellery. My dad's mum was what's it rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. She just had so many rings on all her fingers, on her hands, and she ended up having five granddaughters and three daughters-in-law, so eight women in her life, and she had a ring earmarked for each of us that we received as a special gift on the inheritance. So that that type of thing goes into the Letter of Wishes.
(30:58):
So just values around life, sources of inspiration. I think those types of things are so meaningful as a way to let your family members know about your inner life and to remind them of that aspect of you. And the Letter of Wishes is a perfect place to put it. So this has been a bit of a rambling episode. It's kind of hard because we're not talking about strict legal rules, but I hope it has given you some food of thought. If you're not letting the Letter of Wishes have a large part of your current estate planning process. Hopefully it has given you some inspiration and we've got some resources for you. So check out the Letter of Wishes workbook. I'll put the link in the show notes for you to go and have a look, and that will be an incredible starting point for you to start making this resource available for your clients too.
(31:56):
Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week.
