Tara (00:50):
Hi, it's Tara, your host here. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today's episode is all about why do some clients get cold feet when it comes time to signing their testamentary trust wills, and what can we do about it?
(01:09):
So this podcast episode was inspired by a post I actually saw in our art of estate planning Facebook group where someone said, "Look, I've sent and prepared testamentary trust wills for these clients. They've been sitting on the draughts and now they've come back to me and said, I don't even know if we need testamentary trusts. They feel too complicated. We just want to go back to basic wills. What do I do? How do I manage my costs on this matter? Because I'll have to redraft new wills. I've already done most of the work. We really lost sight of the benefits for the clients. It's not the outcome I want to deliver for them. How do I get this matter back on track?" And my heart really went out to that person posting because it is a really frustrating and challenging situation to be in, and it's really something we want to avoid.
(02:06):
So in this episode, I'm not going to give any tips on how to get that matter back on track, but I do want to talk about some ideas for avoiding ending up in that situation in the first place, because it's really hard to get a happy, successful outcome for you and the clients when you've already already gone off the rails. So let's talk about what can we do to put in some bumpers in our practise so that we actually don't end up in that situation in the first place. And look, no criticism to that person posting. I just feel like whenever we see something that isn't an ideal outcome, it is really challenging, but we can also look at the learnings and lessons from that outcome to say, "Well, how can we actually set things up so we're not in that situation?" So I really hope this doesn't come across as a criticism.
(03:06):
It's more about, okay, not in the heat of the moment, taking a step back, what can we do to just prevent us be finding ourselves in that situation? So I want to start by looking at why do clients behave this way? What could be going through their mind or what circumstances could be existing so that we have some kind of understanding about the possible solution? So one thing that comes to mind, and this was actually mentioned in that post, and I've seen it firsthand on my matters too, is where there is a delay or a longer lead time between all of that preparatory explanations around testamentary trusts and strategy discussions about why they need a testamentary trust and why they've chosen it. And then there's a large delay between them receiving the draughts or they might receive the draughts promptly from you, but then there's a large delay in them looking at them and having the meeting to discuss and sign them.
(04:14):
That can really take things off track. You and I talk about testamentary trusts all the time. We know their benefits intimately, but for the layperson, they are a complex concept and sometimes they can be overwhelmed by remembering all the information and they might lose track of the detail. So it can be problematic when there's a large delay and they've simply forgotten the benefits. They might remember, oh, they're meant to sort of help with asset protection, but they've lost sight of how they're going to help their particular beneficiaries and family and how those benefits apply to their unique circumstances. And I think you can also couple that with the fear and discomfort that arises when people feel like they don't understand something. A lot of people's gut reaction when they are feeling like they don't understand something in front of them and it's something important is to just reject it and go back to what they know, which is a basic will.
(05:30):
Every person thinks they understand a basic will. Whether they do or not understand the intricacies of it, they probably don't because they are more complex than we know, but they feel like they get that. I give everything to you and then to the kids. Everyone they know has done a basic will. Everyone they know who has died has done a basic will. They might've even been involved as an executor or beneficiary of a basic will, but a lot of people are not involved in testamentary trusts. They might be the first person in their family or lineage doing a testamentary trust. So if they've forgotten what the testamentary trust will bring to their particular family and they just see a 30-page document with lots of technical jargon, it can be overwhelming. So I think that's probably the main contender that people experience. It's overwhelming. They feel uncomfortable.
(06:30):
They feel stupid. They feel like they are dumb, which is obviously the last thing we would ever want to make a person feel. But if that is sort of the self-talk that's going on in their mind because we've just dumped draughts with them and expected them to sort of work it out themselves, then it is really normal for them to just go, "Oh, this is too hard. I feel anxious. I don't feel good about this. I just want to go back to what I know. " So that could be one of the reasons. Lost track in the jargon and lost confidence in why the strategy would work for them. There might have been delays which have contributed to that. Other reasons could be someone's actively undermining your advice. No, that's probably rare, but this was actually mentioned in that post where their financial advisor had said to them, "No, no, no, you don't need a testamentary trust." So obviously that's going to have a big impact where they've got an existing trusted professional giving conflicting advice to you, or it might be they are doing their own research.
(07:40):
So they're getting on YouTube, looking up trusts. They're watching videos from American attorneys about living trusts or issues around probate. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had inquiries or comments on my videos about needing a trust to avoid probate. And I'm like, the red flag and the siren goes on straight away because I know as soon as they mention things like that, that they've been watching content from US lawyers because that's not an issue here in Australia, but it's one of the things the US lawyers seem to promote for their trusts, which I barely know anything about their revocable trusts. Oh yeah, that's another red flag. If they start using words like revocable trust, then again, that is something that is in the US system. So they might be getting themselves confused or getting off track. I also see in Facebook forums, it's always the loudest person who's most disgruntled.
(08:45):
The people who've had a great experience never really say anything or share. And it's the loud, unhappy people who are posting saying, "My aunt set one of these up and it was the worst thing to happen to our family." And of course you never get into the detail of was it a true testamentary discretionary trust or was it some other type of trust and what really happened? All you hear is it was terrible. So there could be things like that happening. Alternatively, they might just have something going on in their life where they're frozen with indecision and inertia and they can't make a decision either way because something may just happen financial, someone's died, there's family problems, issues with the kids that's distracting them, those types of things as well. And it all just falls into the low priority too hard basket. There's so many reasons why a client might get cold feet over their testamentary trust draught wills, but it can help to just have a little bit of empathy and understanding about these things that can come up so that we can try to get ahead of them.
(09:52):
So what are some of the possible solutions? I've got a long list here. Hopefully you're already doing some of them. If you are not, then great, you might like to take some tips from today and weave that into your workflow and process. If there's a couple in here, hopefully there's some food for thought. So the first one I'll just mention in respect to a financial advisor or accountant actively undermining your advice is that I'm a huge proponent of bringing in those advisors early and actually developing joint collaborative recommendations with them. So not every advisor is going to want to do that, but I would welcome having a financial advisor or accountant in the strategy meeting. I really welcome the client providing my recommendations to them, even us just having a chat to say, "Look, this is what we're thinking of doing." Obviously where the referral is coming from the advisor, then that's probably happening already.
(10:58):
But if the client has sought you out of their own volition and then has a financial advisor or accountant, I would really be encouraging them to be looped into the process and have an open dialogue so you don't get to the phase of delivering draughts and then that third party professional is coming in with different recommendations. So I would recommend wholly collaborating with them and bringing them in. Some other options are more around the resources that you have around testamentary trust. So in our TT Precedents Club, I see some lawyers doing this incredibly well. So they're really active on their social media. They have invested in information resources about testamentary trust. So they've recorded a video of themselves explaining testamentary trust. It's on YouTube. It's on their website. They can send it to clients. They've got the branded flyers from our precedent packages explaining testamentary trusts and they're talking about testamentary trusts all the time on their blog and in their social media.
(12:12):
And what that actually does is it creates the testamentary trust runways for clients. So their clients are actually coming to that lawyer because of their specialty and testamentary trust. So they've actually done all the preparation work before this person is even a client by explaining and selling the benefits of them over social media and in their marketing material. So by the time the client approaches them, the client's saying, "I think I need a testamentary trust. Can you prepare it for me? " So I just think that's probably the gold standard in avoiding this situation because you've pre-sold the client. The same can be as well with the financial advisor or accountant relationships. You've fostered those referral relationships with the accountants and financial advisors so that they are big fans of testamentary trust and they've pre-sold the client on the testamentary trust. So I think that's incredible.
(13:16):
If you listen to some of my other episodes, you know that I just love lawyers investing in those assets because they just keep on giving and they save you time over and over. And I think that goes into my next point about talking about testamentary trusts, how they work and the benefits each and every time you interact with the clients so that before they've come to you, they know all about the testamentary trust through your social media runway. When you are having the conversations with them, you're talking about the testamentary trust. When you're having the strategy meeting, you're talking about the testamentary trust, you're sending them the testamentary trust explanation video and the flyer when you email them the cost agreement, when you email them the recommendations from the meeting and when you email them the draught. So each and every interaction, they're getting a reminder on testamentary trusts.
(14:12):
Tying into that as well is practically how you talk about testamentary trust. So they are a really complex topic. As you know, if you're using our testamentary trust precedents or in our TT Precedents Club, the number of things that come up with them just seems to be endless, but they can also be explained in a really simple way. And I think it's incredibly valuable to you and your team if you can spend the time working out a way that works for you to be able to explain testamentary trust in a simple, practical way that a lay person can understand. It's actually takes a huge amount of intelligence and work to be able to simplify such a complex topic, and it is worth doing that. If you can talk to your clients in a way that they can walk away and go, "I don't know the exact ins and outs of testamentary trust, but I do know broadly how it's going to work and why it's good for my family." And I would also tie into that.
(15:21):
I'm sorry, I'm like jumping, leapfrogging on topic, on topic, on topic, but it's all connected. As part of that, giving the clients one or two key benefits of the testamentary trust for their family and not just like, "Oh, asset protection," but actually saying, "When your daughter has a relationship breakdown, the inheritance is protected." There might be other benefits, the income tax, tax-free income for the school fees, but if you just really hammer home that one or two key benefits for them that they can remember that they're not overwhelmed by, and it's the thing that will keep them up at night if it's not sorted. So for couples with minor children, it might be the surviving spouse repartnering and those kids never seeing their inheritance. And for baby boomer clients, it might be your adult child going through a divorce and that your son or daughter-in-law taking your inheritance from them.
(16:36):
Whatever it is, there's a whole range of benefits. If they're in business, if one of the spouses or children are in business, that could be it. Whatever it is, pick the thing that is going to keep them up at night. In our free resources, we actually have a document about how to overcome estate planning inertia. I'm going to put it in the show notes and in that document, there's actually key discussion points that you can pick for each about nine different demographics, couples with children, single parents with children, couples without children, baby boomer generation, all of that. So you can go through and it will help you pick on which of these discussion points is going to be most important to that demographic, just to sort of help you with that. But I think if you can leave the clients with just one key benefit that they can remember, it really can help ease some of that overwhelm because they go, "I need the testamentary trust for this one thing." And that just keeps them focused on the benefit to their family.
(17:48):
Obviously tying into that as well is having a good quality precedent that's in plain English and laid out really clearly. So we talk a lot about precedence for testamentary trust because that is our core business here, but it is really important. So if you do need to sort of audit your precedent, I mean, I think the very first thing you can do is looking at how well clients do actually respond to the draughts and interpreting them, and then also same with referral sources. But if you do need to go back to auditing your testamentary trust precedent, check out episode 57, How to Spot, a Strong Testamentary Trust Precedent. We've got some resources there, but really the main thing is if it's in plain English, easy for them to understand and follow. And then also, how do you explain it? And when you send the draughts, I used to say, "Look, just read clauses one to five.
(18:49):
Check everyone's name and address is correct and we'll cover the rest in the meeting." And you might actually do a video to a company there will, like a quick loom. It doesn't have to be long, but just having it there and going, "Look, here's your executives. Check the names. Here's the guardians. That's who's going to look after the kids if you've both died. Check the names and I've set them in the right order. Your personal belongings are going here. Here's a few specific gifts we're carving out. And then the rest is going to the trust. Let's have a look at who's running the trust, blah, blah, blah. The beneficiaries are this. " We can go over the rest in our meeting. Just check that these details are right so we need to make any changes before we get in the room together. It might take two minutes and then just having that handholding to guide them through the long, lengthy document can make all the difference as well.
(19:44):
You might not even do a tailored video. You could have a customised video. You might record four different ones for individuals, couples with minor children, without, or something like that. And just to say, "Here's how to navigate your will. This is the key sections I want you to look at." You don't even have to explain it because if it's in plain English, they'll be able to read their particular will and what is happening under it. So something like that, it might take you half a day to record those videos. You don't even need it to be fancy. It can literally just be on your webcam. Put your computer in front of a window, do your makeup, get your hair nice, put whatever you do if you're a bloke as well, and then just record it. People don't need you to be too polished. What they need is for you to be real, relatable, and to hold their hand.
(20:38):
Now, you might hate that idea, but if you like it, why not try it out? I love getting things like that. With my marketing agency, they send me a report every month about how the ads have performed. And I don't really know what those numbers mean, but they send me a video. It's like maybe five to seven minutes long, and it's like reading through the report saying, "This is a good outcome," or, "This is a bit lower than we thought, so we're going to try X, Y, Z." And it just makes all the difference. Otherwise, I wouldn't even probably read the report or just I'd read it and go, "I don't really know what this means," and sort of sit there not being able to make decisions. So empowering our clients is so important. So yeah, don't drop your draughts and run. Hi, it's Tara here.
(21:27):
You might've heard us mention our TT Precedents Club membership a few times throughout the episodes now. So I wanted to share a little bit more information about what it is and how it works. The TT Precedents Club is a membership for Australian lawyers. Whether you're an estate planning specialist, an early career lawyer, or you're experienced in another legal area and you want to add estate planning as a compliment to your existing services. It doesn't matter as long as you're curious about estate planning and keen to learn and share in our estate planning mastermind group. Every Thursday, we meet at one o'clock Australian Standard Time or two o'clock daylight savings times, and we have a live Zoom call where our members submit their questions in advance. We can workshop your client scenarios, research your tricky questions, or even draught clauses for you. It will make you feel so supported like you work in a firm with 50 estate planning partners who were all there to share the collective knowledge with you.
(22:30):
There is no reason to feel intimidated. Our community is so supportive, friendly, and there are no silly questions ever. Not only do you get access to our awesome weekly hot seat calls, but we have an exclusive Facebook group too. And if you thought our free art of estate planning group was amazing, then this Facebook group is on steroids. You also get discounts to the Art of Estate Planning Precedents, a huge back catalogue of training, in- person networking meetups, a will drafting clause library, and tonnes of other practical resources to help you in your estate planning practise. Your membership is just month to month, so you can join for as little as one month and then cancel any time. There is no lock-in period or minimum join time and it is super flexible. So join me and over 200 lawyers in Australia's best estate planning community.
(23:27):
Another factor I think can go into it is about the timing. So the quicker your matter progresses, the more profitable it is for you. The more everybody understands everything that's going on, you don't lose track of things. Clients remember your advice and they're engaged in the process. So in the TT Precedents Club, a lot of our members actually try and book both, or it depends how many meetings they're having, but if they're having a strategy meeting, they might book the signing meeting and schedule that at the end of the strategy meeting then and there. So the clients are locked in. You're committed to a time when you have to provide the draughts and you're back within two or three weeks. If you are not doing a planning meeting, you might just book your signing meeting in right away so that you don't have a big delay between sending the draughts and the meeting.
(24:23):
And I also think it's important on you that there's no big delay from the recommendations to sending out the draughts. Just keep these matters on pace. I know that you have a lot going on, but I actually think the delays add to the busyness and the overwhelm. And it's fine to have a wait list. It's fine to say, "Look, we are booked out for March, but in April we can start and the process will take three weeks." And you just have people on a shorter time rather than trying to fit in everybody's strategy meeting as soon as they say yes, want to go ahead and then you are behind on the draughts and you're just chasing your tail the whole time. It's okay to say, "We will book you in starting from here and this is the timeline." On that note, actually preparing for this episode and listening to the comments on that post I mentioned which inspired this episode, actually got me inspired to create a new resource for our estate planning pricing toolkit.
(25:32):
So all people who buy the pricing toolkit and anyone in our TT Precedents Club will get access to this, I'm not quite sure when we'll be able to drop it, but this morning I sat down and brainstormed and just created two new resources. So the first one is a steps and timeline, sort of a four landscape graphic flyer that can go to clients at the same time as the price list, which basically says like, what are the exact steps in your estate planning? For us, we'd use the word matter. I haven't used matter in that because that doesn't mean anything to clients, but what are the steps? Who's doing what and what's the timeline? So it's got basically the responsibilities for them and for you. So you are committing to getting the draughts out this time. Even like we're going to verify your identity, you have to put the money in the trust, we're going to contact your accountant or you're going to introduce us to your accountant.
(26:38):
You are going to give us this information. We're going to do the draughts. We're going to have the meeting. We're going to have this next meeting within so many weeks of the first meeting. And obviously lawyers can customise this to meet their particular workflow process. And we might have a few variations for your vanilla and your complex status, but I'll be creating that resource. It goes in Word and also in Canva for the lawyers who use our pricing toolkit to customise that so that they can send it. Ideally as a ... It's just kind of like they get a couple of versions for their different matter types that is then a flyer. They don't have to customise it per client and it just goes out. So you're really clearly setting the expectations to the clients about what they have to do and what you're going to do and how long that all takes.
(27:29):
As with any relationship, expectations is the biggest area where things can go off the rails, right? Because there's a misalignment and they're thinking this and you're thinking that. So if we can get those expectations really clear upfront, I actually think that will be so powerful. The other resource is just a little flyer about, we love working with you. We love giving people peace of mind. We've been doing this for a long time and we've learned a few things about how to get this process as smoothly and enjoyable for you as possible. So here are the things that we as the lawyers are going to do. We are going to treat, be impartial between your interests as a couple. We're going to communicate clearly. We are going to be upfront with our pricing. We are going to let you know if we can't meet a deadline.
(28:25):
We are not going to send you an invoice for fees we haven't discussed. We are not going to just go silent and ghost you without explaining. We are not going to prioritise one of your interests over the other, whatever. And then for the client, it'll say you will provide us with all the information we need and provide us with clear instructions. You will let us know if there's anything you're unsure about, if you've got any questions or you're feeling uncertain, you will let us know if anything changes. You will not do things like put our advice and documents into an AI product or LLM. You will not try and amend our PDF documents. You will not hide information from us. You will not ghost us without explanation. Those are just some examples off the top of my head of what I put in there, but just really being clear about here's what we will do.
(29:23):
I think I've just said we will do our best to serve your interests and give you the best dam estate plan you ever had for your family, but just really making it clear. We want to delight you. We want you to have an incredible outcome. We think about this deeply. We really honour the privilege of working with you, but here's our boundaries and here's what won't work for us. So you're really clear. In our pricing toolkit, we also have cost agreement terms that go into your estate planning cost agreement. So go back to episode 22 of the podcast where we talk about this in a lot of detail, but in our estate planning pricing toolkit, we have the estate planning specific terms that need to be in your cost agreement. So the idea is you take these and put it into your normal law society compliant cost agreement.
(30:19):
And there are things in there like you're not meant to put our advice into any AI product. You aren't going to decide you want to rewrite every single clause and nitpick every testamentary trust clause on page 32 and go through it with a fine tooth comb. Shout out to the engineers if anyone's had one of those. So it just is really, and they're just trying to protect you from all the way things can go wrong. But let's face it, who's really reading the cost agreement? The cost agreement is for you to protect yourself when things have already gone badly, to then point to it and say, "Well, I sent you this, so this is the position I'm taking." But this flyer is to be upfront in a really client-friendly language to just sort of cover off some of the basics about what's allowed and not allow.
(31:13):
Things like don't record me without my consent and I will contact your financial advisor or accountant and you have to introduce them to me. It's not long and it's set out in a really nice client-friendly, easy to read way, but just kind of setting some boundaries and expectations that you can, again, as a flyer, just attach when you send out the instruction sheet or the price list to just sort of say, "Look, here's how we work and here's how I expect you to work." So look, on that front though, the cost agreement is really important to have tailored terms for estate planning because there are some really unique things that go wrong with estate planning. And for instance, in this one, a client going, "I chose testamentary trusts and I agreed to the price, but now I just want a basic will, so is that cheaper?" And from your perspective, you're like, "Well, actually it's more expensive because I've got to draught another set of wills.
(32:10):
I've got to throw out the first draught I've worked on and then create a new one and our meetings are going to go longer. And now I've got to send you another off risk letter explaining why I think you need a testamentary trust, but you've decided not to follow my advice." So in our cost agreement precedent, it's actually like if you change your mind or your instructions partway through the matter, there will be more fees for us to do that. So you're at least protected with your cost disclosure to say, "Well, actually it's not cheaper. It's more expensive." And if they go, "Okay, well, it is what it is. Sorry, I changed my mind." Then you're able to issue a variation and keep going. Whereas if you don't have that in there, you have just a total misalignment of expectations and it's really hard to recover from there, especially when our relationship relies so much on trust.
(33:03):
And if you guys can't trust each other about the fees partway through the matter, it's really hard to get your matter back on track. Another technical or I guess will-based drafting strategy you can adopt is making sure that your testamentary trust wills are optional. So that almost gives you something to point to. If the client's partway through go, "Oh, I thought we wanted a testamentary trust, but now I want a basic will." What's that El Paso Tarco ad? Why not have both? The will that we've drafted for you actually allows the executor to bypass the testamentary trust and implement a basic simple will if that's what's needed at the time. So we've actually covered all the bases, but with this will I prepared for you. You can have the testamentary trust. Remember, you only get one chance. It has to be in the will before you die.
(33:58):
If it's not in the will and your family decided they needed one, too bad, so it has to be in there. We've covered that base, but if it turns out that it is over the top and unnecessary when you have died, they don't have to follow it. So that can be something to have up your sleeve to just say, "Great, I hear what you're saying. We're covering all the bases." So go listen to episode 51 of the podcast where we talk about how that works in more detail. So I know that's a lot to digest, but hopefully that gives you some food for thought about how you can just set up the foundation of your matters, get your workflow right, your cost agreement, your client communication, setting the boundaries and expectations, and just really having clear upfront communication first. I do truly think a lot of this comes down to the more confident you are with testamentary trust, the better the outcome will be because if you can clearly communicate and explain to the clients why they need a testamentary trust, if you can get your draughts delivered in a quick way, if you've got precedents that integrate with your practise management system and it only takes you five minutes to actually generate the testamentary trust will and you're not sitting there frustrated with a document, overwhelmed by it, actually just procrastinating because you don't like drafting them because they're hard, all of that feeds into having a successful testamentary trust matter.
(35:34):
So if you want to look at our estate planning pricing toolkit, I'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. It covers everything that you need for a successful profitable testamentary trust matter on the pricing perspective. So price list templates. We actually have training in there about how to price and what to charge for your testamentary trust will. So you can check if you're in the market and how you're fitting around your competitors, the cost agreement terms for your estate planning matters. We've also got resources to help with the profitability of your firm. So a break even calculator and training around that to make sure that not only are you charging the right price in the market, but also that you are charging or running enough matters through your firm so that you're going to be able to take home the right amount of pay for you at the end of the year so that your firm is actually profitable.
(36:34):
So we've also got flyers in there just to help you with value pricing if you're still sort of doing some kind of fixed pricing or WIP plus uplift type method to really get you into the value pricing methodology. And as I mentioned, these new resources that we're putting together. So it is February when I'm recording this episode. I'm not quite sure when it's going to come out. And then also if you're in the TT Precedence Club and you have the estate planning pricing toolkit, you will get those new client flyers around the steps, the timelines and the boundaries and expectations when we release them for free for no extra cost. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope this has given you something to think about and I will see you next week.
