Tara (00:50):
Welcome to the Art of Estate Planning Podcast. And oh my goodness, this episode is episode number 100. I can't believe we've made it this far.
(01:03):
I want to say thank you to everybody who has tuned in and supported the podcast, the people where we are part of your weekly routine. That means the absolute world to me. If you've just tuned in for a couple of episodes based on a few relevant topics, that is also amazing. I'm so grateful for your support. I really love the podcast and it gives me an opportunity to indulge my thought process on different things. I'm actually incredibly amazed that we have had enough things to talk about to get to a hundred episodes. I think we've got another hundred in us. So today I really wanted to celebrate, I guess, by reflecting on the lessons that have changed how I think about estate planning. So a hundred episodes in what have I learned over those hundred episodes? And also five years of the TT Precedents Club, which we celebrated earlier this year.
(02:10):
I thought it was a great time to just sit back and reflect because I've been an estate planning lawyer I think for nearly 18 years now, and it's 2026 that I'm recording this. And I am blown away by how much there is still to learn, how much I learned from others in our TT Precedents Club community, and how much growth there still is. It really is a area that needs lifelong learning. Things are also changing quite rapidly. I really feel like we went through a phase a while back where things were quite constant and it was just boring old estate planning, nothing new to see here. And in the last maybe five years, things have been changing at a rapid pace. So that has also been great to keep reflecting as we've had to adapt and pivot our sort of standard scenarios. It's always been good to look at what do we keep, what do we throw away, and how do we adapt our processes?
(03:15):
So I guess I'll start with number one. When I was working as a senior associate at one of the top firms in Brisbane, I'd been there for about eight years before I left to set up View Legal, a firm that I was a partner of. If you want to hear a bit about that story, I cover it I think in episode 67. But it's interesting because when I was in that environment, we held ourselves out as being estate planning experts. We were doing it all day every day for years. And I would think that is definitely true from a technical point of view. But now reflecting on years later, it was really missing a lot of the humanity. And I have learned so, so much from our TT Precedents Club members about the role of the letter of wishes, testing the practical, really stress testing.
(04:12):
How much cash will you have access to if your spouse drops dead tomorrow? Have you got money in bank accounts that are owned jointly or in your own name? Will you be financially stranded until the superannuation money comes through? All of those types of things I really felt like we didn't touch on enough when people were dragging their feet and delaying. We just kept sending the same very robotic reminder being like, "If you don't sign your will before you die, there'll be adverse consequences. We're not responsible," kind of thing when really there was probably money blocks at play that we could have just called them up and had a conversation and tried to work through. So I do think as I am maturing, especially as I've also had children, my approach to the conversation around guardians and how to make that decision and respecting the roadblocks that people had is completely different to when I didn't have children of my own and I really just approached it in a very systematic, impersonal way.
(05:27):
So yeah, I've learned a lot from our TT Precedents Club and the way that people approach the engagement and the client journey. On that same vein, there is always more to learn. It doesn't matter how long I do this. Just for context, in the TT Precedents Club, we get together for at least an hour. Often our sessions go longer than that every Thursday. So I think we probably have a few sessions that we miss over Christmas. So let's say something like 48 times a year, we meet for over an hour. We have been doing that for over five years. So you can imagine the depth and breadth of issues that come up. And even now, we are nowhere close to running out of topics. New scenarios, new issues come up all the time. Obviously there's changes to law that we need to adapt to and the tax regime and all of that, but even just new client scenarios.
(06:35):
At the moment, I'm doing a deep dive on the Victorian Settled Land Act about its application to rights to occupy and rights to reside and whether we need to really pay more attention to that for our clients in Victoria. And I'm like, how can it be that I've been in practise? Well, I was in practise I think for at least 15 years before I'd even heard of this act, let alone now I'm still just starting to deep dive it. And that involves looking at reading textbooks from the '90s because there just seems to be nothing out there on it. So there is just always something new to learn when you think you know everything, check again because you don't. And that can be really stressful, but it's also, I think I'm so reassured because we have the TT Precedents Club. So someone in there will always know something about it, even if I don't know it myself.
(07:36):
And we all lean on each other to help plug our knowledge gaps and raise awareness of things that we don't know. I also learned something recently in my own state, Queensland, from one of our members who is a litigation gun in estate planning and the impact of an enduring power of attorney for financial matters where there's a transaction between the donor under the power of attorney and the attorney or a relative or close friend of the attorney. How broad is that? That if there is any kind of financial transaction, even if it's not done pursuant to the power of attorney, if there just happens to be a power of attorney in place at that time, that there will be a presumption of undue influence, which is pretty much impossible to rebut creating a lot of exposure on transactions. So that wasn't something that I really understood.
(08:37):
I knew that provision was in there, but I didn't understand exactly how much litigators can leverage that and how much power it gives them where there is a dispute and a family provision application or undue influence action. So I am constantly learning all the time about new things, which is a blessing, keeps it interesting, keeps us engaged, and we could just keep going deeper and deeper in our estate planning mastery. Switching gears, I want to talk a little bit about coding. So over the last five years or so, we have really embraced coding, especially for different practise management softwares. So the art of estate planning precedents come with coding for action step, Cleo, Leap, Smokeball, and a no coding option. And so while I am not a coder myself, I have to get our developers to do that. I have to actually strategize behind the coding and look at the user experience of the precedents, make sure the coding is working, strategizing what we code, how deep we code.
(09:48):
And obviously my preference is to code everything as much as we can. There's obviously limitations in each of the software and we have to make a compromise. But someone said something to me the other day that where they're in a firm where they actually are winding their coding back to having a lot less conditional logic. And so what I mean by that is if you say the testamentary trust provides for the surviving spouse, then the definition of primary beneficiaries that populates is different to the definition that populates when the testamentary trust only starts after the surviving spouse has died. And there's only a small difference, but it basically comes into how broad the children. Does it include children of both of them, just the children of the testator? We don't want future children of a surviving spouse with a new partner to be included automatically, things like that.
(10:51):
And the art of estate planning Precedents, especially with Smokeball and Action Step, you don't see those options. You just click a button and tell the computer what the strategy is and the clause comes in. And someone said to me, what they're actually doing in their firm is going back to no conditional logic in automation like that because they actually need to understand and they need their juniors and their team to understand the different drafting variations in there so that they can check that it has populated it. So you actually need to understand what you're drafting, what the other options are to really know that your documents are populating well. Now we try and do that for you at the art of estate planning.That is my whole job, labouring over these clauses and the different options that come in so that your risk is minimised with people not choosing the right option.
(11:55):
But there is, I think, and I don't think the answer is going back and taking all of that out, but I definitely agree with the sentiment that at some point you do need to think deeply around the different drafting options in your precedent and why they're there when you might need to tailor the base case coding for your client's unique circumstances where they don't fit into the vanilla. And there'll be a point, especially for an early career lawyer as they go through their career, that they probably need to look at the source precedent in the Word format to see if this decision is chosen, then this is the clause that populates. If a different decision is chosen, then a different clause populates what's the different and to understand it. So we do our best to make it idiot proof, but I think to really take it to be a real expert in this, there is a point where you actually do need to understand what's populating, but also what's not populating and why.
(13:06):
Now that's not to put anyone off because especially if you're starting out, I don't think you need to go into that level at all and you can trust that. But as you're going through and becoming more curious, I really do think that is worthwhile.
(13:22):
Actually looking at your Precedents and understanding all of the different drafting options. Switching gears again, one thing that comes up time and time again in the TT Precedents Club where people bring different client scenarios and strategies is that money makes people crazy. Especially we have so many stories where a blended family will sit down with the lawyer and say, "We trust each other implicitly. This is what we both want to do." So they'll make their wills that are mirror image, and then as soon as one of them dies, the surviving spouse comes in and changes their will. And obviously that's a complex scenario and that's usually how it gets brought up in our TT Precedents conversations, but it does just money, just people will swear black and blue that everything will be fine. Their family won't have any conflict and you just can't rely on that.
(14:28):
So I'm sure we've all got those kind of war stories that come in and what can you do? Well, you just have to follow their instructions and caution the risks. But I think the longer you're in this industry, the more you see things that nothing surprises you anymore. I guess in line with this is it's okay to change your mind as a professional. And the particular scenario that I'm thinking of is around mutual wills for me. So when I was a early career lawyer, the firm I worked for did not prepare mutual wills. We just refused to do it. We referred it out. It was not part of our wheelhouse. We didn't recommend it. And obviously that influenced me and my approach very heavily. So for a very long time, I refused to recommend mutual wills. I've never prepared a mutual will for a client.
(15:29):
And even in the TT Precedents Club conversations, a lot of the time I'll be like, "I don't like mutual wills," but I'm slowly changing my mind on that because I do think that there is a category of clients where there may be no better option and the mutual wills does solve things for them. Any other solution just introduces an enormous amount of complexity. So I think where you've got a blended family who are definitely beyond the likelihood of having more children, probably not likely to re-partner again if one of them passes away, they don't have a big asset pool, and they're not sophisticated in the sense that they've never had any exposure to family trusts or any kinds of trusts or companies of their own, and really nearly all their assets are in a family home and they've got a lot of illiquid assets. I think that a mutual will is probably going to be the most straightforward option for them, notwithstanding the risks of mutual wills.
(16:46):
So we get a lot of these in the TT Precedents Club where practitioners are bringing the strategy for feedback from the group to say, "Is there anything I'm missing? Can we look at this? Can we cut up the apple and the orange and divide these different ways?" And a lot of the time as a group, we're like, "I think a mutual will is probably the best option here." And I have always said, "I don't do mutual wills. I don't recommend mutual wills, but this year I am working on a mutual will precedent. So I've changed my mind." And we have this joke. It's basically, it's like if we are going to do them, then let's make sure we do them properly so we can manage the risk to the clients and manage the risk to your practitioners. So it's a little bit like if your teenagers are going to have sex, you're probably better off giving them a box of condoms than just covering your eyes and pretending it's not happening and letting them work it out on their own.
(17:50):
I don't know if that's the best analogy, but yeah, I've changed my mind. We're going to create a mutual will precedent. Obviously I've just said I've never ever prepared a mutual will myself, so I will definitely be leveraging the experience and expertise in TT Precedents Club for our members who do this work regularly as part of their practise to get their feedback, have them test it, and to really make sure that it is best practise. What I'm really good at is systemizing intellectual property in a way that tries to make it idiot-proof, caters for all contingencies, coding, that kind of thing. So I'll be bringing that element of my strengths, and then we will also be making sure that we actually bring in the practical expertise as well to, in combination, package up a solution for our members who need to use this solution while we've got the appropriate bumpers in place.
(18:54):
So yeah, I think it is okay to change your mind. Hi, it's Tara here. 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 are 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 2:00 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.
(19:53):
It will make you feel so supported like you work in a firm with 50 estate planning partners who were all there to share their collective knowledge with you. 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 anytime.
(20:48):
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. I also think it's really important to speak up about what you believe in. So this probably, I don't get this so much anymore, to be honest, but when I first started posting a lot on social media, and I just have to say, I really think that was just a different time as well. Eight, nine years ago, there were very few lawyers doing things on Instagram, on LinkedIn. Not a lot of video or face to camera. It was very text heavy. And I was this young, I mean, I was like 33 or something, but I think I looked young, definitely looked younger than I do now. But I was this young lawyer coming in doing a lot of face to camera and blabbing and running my mouth about testamentary trusts.
(21:52):
I also think testamentary trusts were not as common in the take-up, and they were really the domain of the sort of big end of town law firms. I think a lot of people were only recommending them for high net wealth. They weren't really a strategy for everyday families. And I think that came just down to people didn't have access to Precedents and knowledge that obviously we've been doing this for eight years in the art of estate planning now. So back then though, you really had to work under somebody in order to be able to be trained on how to do testamentary trusts or just really wing it on your own and cobble together a few textbooks and papers and that type of thing. So back then I used to, from time to time, cop a fair bit of criticism about when I recommended testamentary trusts.
(22:48):
A lot of people said it's over the top. They have too many problems with them. They're not suitable for laypeople who don't understand trust. You can't discharge your duties about explaining them and having the requisite knowledge and approval. And just generally, I should just tone it down. That is crazy now because I mean, I guess everyone's just used to me going on about it and knowing that I'm not going to shut up. Or I think they just ignore me to be fair. But there's also so much more attention. The media's picking them up. Maybe that's still happening and I'm not hearing it and I'm in an echo chamber of my amazing TT Precedents Club members. But we have 700 law firms around Australia who use our precedents. We're almost up to 750. My goal is to get to a thousand maybe by next year sometime.
(23:44):
So the tide has turned. I could have absolutely just taken that criticism and quietened myself down or felt like a tall poppy and that I didn't want to keep copying it. But instead I had a thick skin. I ignored it. The reality is my skin's not that thick, but I just believe so passionately that I was right and am right and that their view was out of date and out of touch with everyday Australians. I think as soon as I also had my family, my children, that just cemented my resolve even further. So my approach to actually dealing with that criticism was to build a better testamentary trust and a better product. So to normalise it, to create accessibility. I particularly remember reading a paper from a barrister criticising the use of testamentary trusts, testamentary discretionary trusts. And I mean, some of his comments were fair, but a lot of them revolved obviously around where he has seen testamentary trusts go badly in court.
(24:58):
And a lot of the time that was because the testamentary trusts were drafted really poorly. They didn't have variation powers. They weren't truly discretionary. They had short vesting dates, and they were just not viewed as the same type of vehicle as a Intervivos family trust. So my approach was that we just needed to overcome that with better drafting in our precedent. We need to, as a whole, increase the education around how to communicate and bring in better communication skills. So one of the things I study a lot is digital marketing. And as part of digital marketing, obviously there's a lot of sales, and sales is really just communication, which is very radically different to communicating as a lawyer when you're doing sales. But a lot of it is understanding your client's pain points. I mean, they kind of say to do that so you can exploit them, but so that you can understand the perspective of your client, put yourselves in their shoes, see where they are having challenges and struggles, and build something that solves that.
(26:14):
So one of the things we've done is really focused on better communication about testamentary trust. How do we break down the principles so a layperson can feel really confident understanding them? How do we build flyers, videos, all kinds of resources to make it easier for a non-lawyer to understand them? So yeah, I'm really actually proud of how far we have come with testamentary trust. I very rarely hear anyone saying anything negative about testamentary trust. Maybe they just don't say it to me anymore and my echo chamber is reinforcing it. But I just think the constant barrage of information about testamentary trusts over the last eight years has really just normalised them as a popular strategy. And yeah, I'm really proud of that. We've had a few threats, I guess, or things that have happened over the last while impacting the way that we practise in estate planning.
(27:18):
So for instance, I've been talking about it all year, the threat of the federal budget and the change to the taxation of trust. So for instance, there was concern about a minimum 30% tax applying to testamentary trust income the same way that it would apply to family trust income. And that we got really not a lot of notice about that. There wasn't a lot of consultation about it before the announcement. And as an industry, we really had to move extremely quickly. If you've been listening to the podcast, you'll know I've released a number of episodes about that, so we don't really need to relive that. But just to recap, as an industry, we really rallied together to persuade the government to actually exclude testamentary discretionary trust from that strategy. They already had a bit of a principle that deceased estates and fixed testamentary trusts and special disability trusts wouldn't be caught by that, but they were treating testamentary discretionary trusts more like a family trust rather than a deceased estate inheritance vehicle.
(28:37):
So we had to do a lot of communication to explain it's not a tax avoidance strategy. Tax is not the main driver for using a testamentary discretionary trust. We are not doing income streaming and diverting income away from high earners. This is really a structure that is holding and preserving inheritances. And anyone who is benefiting is usually, at least for the first generation, inherently vulnerable because someone had to die to create this trust and it contains that inheritance. So as an industry, we really had to rally and also pivot. So I think that the way that we were able to organise ourselves and make such a meaningful impact to have this turned around was firstly our amazing community and the community that we've built in the art of estate planning over the last eight years, but also the deep knowledge that some of us in the community have about testamentary trust and trust.
(29:45):
So I try and talk quite a lot high level about testamentary trust, but I do understand them very deeply as well. And because of that knowledge, I was able To really easily work out, okay, if this is the new normal, how do we pivot? How do we communicate this to clients? How do we tell them you need to change things or you can sit tight? You don't need to change things. So again, I think it comes down to this concept of to produce something effective at a high level communication, you do need to go deep on the knowledge side. If you don't understand it well enough to explain it simply, then you don't understand it. I think that's a sort of paraphrasing of an Albert Einstein quote, but to create a very simple flow chart for clients, which I circulated with the TT Precedents Club members for them to rebrand and share with their clients who were asking questions, I had to really understand how we were drafting our Precedents already, how the tax changes would work, what it would mean for particular demographics of beneficiaries to work out.
(31:02):
Actually, anyone who's already earning over $45,000 of employment income or income from other sources will not be paying more tax on a distribution from the testamentary trust where they're an adult. So things like that. If I still had kept a pretty superficial knowledge around testamentary trust, I wouldn't know how to adapt our strategy because the things that we present forward and the decision trees and the fact sheets and all of that, those are all influenced by that deep knowledge and those can change easily as we just kind of package them up to make it easy, but those are not the end game. The end game is really deeply knowing the law and the theory and the practical consequences of that behind it. So all of that is to say, here's a plug for my online course, Testamentary Trust, the essential guide for Australian lawyers. Because if you are preparing testamentary trust wills, I do think it's very important for you to know all the theory and principles behind it.
(32:13):
We do give you the idiot proof, I've put that in inverted comments for people listening, version of the Precedents to minimise your risk and make it as easy as possible to deliver. But at the same time, there will be circumstances, whether it's a blended family or factual circumstances that are outside the norm, where if you know all the theory and principles behind it, you'll really be able to adapt and pivot the recommendations. And if you don't, if you're just sort of working at that high level, the rules that we create for you, then it is going to be a lot harder for you to know when to respond and pivot. Okay, the next lesson is threats, our industry under attack, whether it is from online wills or now AI. We've been through the online will drama where a couple of years ago everyone was really stressed out about all the incredible marketing from the online will providers about quickly do your will.
(33:22):
And it felt really threatening at the time. Their prices are basically rock bottom. They make a very compelling digital marketing case. And a lot of us were worried when all of this was sort of at its peak that it would cannibalise our work. The reality is it hasn't really. The clients who were interested in an online will were never our ideal client. They're not legacy builders. And I do think there could be something very similar from the AI threat as well. Why would you even. Actually, AI is almost summarily dispensing the online will providers. Why would you use an online will where you have to pay 50 bucks when you could just ask ChatGPT to write your will? Our ideal clients are not using ChatGPT to write their will. Okay, they might be producing AI slop that they're sending to you to answer questions and things, which we'll talk about another time, but they are still engaging with the lawyer.
(34:24):
And that is because your ideal clients want human connection. They need a lawyer to explain in layman's terms in a language they understand what testamentary trust wills are. They want a person to look across the desk from or across the Zoom camera to reassure them that their documents will give them the legacy plan that they want, that their kids will be taken care of. So in the same way that this law firms who practise in estate planning are thriving despite the online will providers, they will continue to thrive despite AI. Yes, we can leverage AI. And in fact, I've got notes for an episode just on that, but I'm probably don't feel an expert enough on it yet. So I will do something on AI and the role in estate planning and we'll have an episode on that, but I just need a little bit more knowledge, I think, before I share what I'm thinking with you.
(35:28):
If you want to go back and listen and you are still stressed about online wills or you want to hear about what I had to say about them from an AI perspective, episodes number seven and number 26 is where we cover that. So I think just put the blinkers on, keep on keeping on, do your amazing job, delight and surprise your existing clients, focus on that human connection, make the customer journey as smooth and pleasant as possible, remove those barriers, and I think we'll be fine. Now my very last lesson, thank you for sticking with me, is the importance of being part of a team in estate planning and how incredible our estate planning community is. When I started the art of estate planning, we actually had financial advisors and accountants as our ideal client. And I had a course for them about their role in the estate planning process to encourage clients to embark on it, how to pick a lawyer to collaborate with, and communicating with them about key estate planning concepts.
(36:41):
Unfortunately, that all happened around the exact same time as the Royal Commission where a lot of them had to either leave the industry or go back to uni to keep their qualifications. So that was a disaster in terms of timing. But nevertheless, that was fine because it was just my side gig while I was running my law firm. But I eventually pivoted to preparing precedents and education for lawyers. And a large part of that was just the feedback that I kept getting from the lawyers. I'm constantly talking about testamentary trusts online. And even though I was talking to financial advisors and accountants as my customer avatar, lawyers kept connecting and reaching out and they said, "I love what you're saying, but how do I even prepare one?" And so eventually that got to sharing Precedents in an ad hoc way. And now obviously we are a full-blown precedent business.
(37:40):
And I was really scared of going down that path. I was really scared of criticism from other lawyers. Lawyers are picky.
(37:51):
So that type of thing. I was scared of, I had my own level of imposter syndrome. I don't have a master's in succession law. I'm mostly on the job and self-taught. I learn deeply about estate planning, but I haven't got a formal qualification beyond the bachelor degree. So there was all of that. And also the fear of if I don't do this well, other lawyers are going to be liable for the work. And so there's a big responsibility on my shoulders to make sure I teach them everything they need to know, make the Precedents risk proof, and that was really scary as well. But thank goodness I got over that and I just did it because our community is amazing. We are over 300 strong in the TT Precedents Club. It's August 2026. I'm recording this. We have over 700 law firms using our precedents.
(38:54):
Our community is the most supportive community ever. Just as an example, so I'm really blessed to be a finalist at the Queensland Law Society Excellence Awards for Sole Practitioner of the Year or Lawyer of the Year in a Sole Practitioner category. There are two other, out of the five nominees or finalists, five finalists, there are two other estate planning lawyers, both women. So there's three estate planning women lawyers who are finalists out of the five. The other two are both in the art of estate planning. They've been customers. I'm hosting them, one of them at our table. I've got the TT Precedents Club group is coming. We've got a table, myself and Chelsea Baker, who's one of the finalists. We're sitting at the table. So hopefully we get a win of the night no matter who gets it. But we are all about collaboration over competition.
(39:58):
I am just thrilled that we have so much representation in estate planning, and it's a win for me already. Yeah, I can't share how ecstatic I am about that. It's so amazing that I actually feel really weird going for those awards because I have so many incredible members of the TT Precedents Club who are all eligible. So I wouldn't normally apply, but one of our TT Precedents Club members nominated me and out of respect for the time it took her to do that nomination, I thought I had better fill in the paperwork to follow the nomination through. But now we've got a table, I've got nine or eight other TT Precedents Club members coming to support me and Chelsea when they themselves could very well and should be finalists as well. And it's just going to be the best night and such a supportive vibe.
(40:59):
And I just love how supportive our community is. We are so much stronger together. I saw this quote and it was like, "No one of us is smarter than all of us." And that is just so true when it comes to the TT Precedents Club. And so it is an absolute honour to be leading up that community. I talk about it a little bit more actually in my recent episode 92, if you want to, you're probably sick of me going on about it, but if you do want to hear a bit more about the TT Precedents Club, you can listen there. But yeah, so those are the lessons that I've learned over the last five years over reflecting on a hundred episodes. I am just so grateful to all of you for listening. The people who've been a listener from day one, if you're a brand new listener, thank you so much for joining.
(41:54):
We're a hundred episodes in. If there's anything that you think I should cover that we haven't covered, please feel free to send it through to me. I'm always interested in new ideas. I love the feedback on what is of interest and what is not, but I am just so thrilled. Thank you so much. I never thought we would get this far. Obviously it's a very niche topic, so to have your support to allow us to keep making the podcast is so meaningful to me. So thank you for listening in. I hope to celebrate and I will see you next week.
