Ep. 72 | Are You One of the 60% Without a Proper Estate Plan? with Morgan Solomon

60% of Australians are what one of the country's leading estate planning lawyers calls 'set up for a bit of a disaster.' No will. A will that's 10 years out of date. Or no idea if they even have one.

In this episode of The Purposeful Investor, David Andrew and Aden Wilkins sit down with Morgan Solomon a founding director of Solomon Hollett Lawyers and 25 year succession law specialist. They unpack the A to Z of estate planning. This is one of the most important financial conversations any family can have, and most people keep putting it off.

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Chapters:
(0:00) Introduction & Episode Preview
(1:00) Welcome & Guest Introduction: Morgan Solomon
(1:45) Win of the Week
(4:35) Why Estate Planning Is Central to Financial Advice
(7:50) What Makes a Good Estate Plan
(11:00) The 60% of Australians at Risk
(13:20) What Happens When You Die Without a Will
(19:00) Why Post Office Wills and AI Wills Fail
(26:30) The Executor Role Explained
(38:30) Estate vs Non-Estate Assets: Super and Family Trusts
(43:45) Superannuation and Binding Death Benefit Nominations
(50:10) Testamentary Trusts: What They Are and Why You Need One

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Recorded and produced by Podwave Studios https://podwavestudios.au/

The Purposeful Investor Podcast is a public service provided for Australian investors wanting to make smart decisions with their money, avoid costly mistakes, look after the people they care about, and, have a great life!

We draw on over 30 years of experience from David Andrew and the Capital Partners team.

For more information on Capital Partners' award winning team, visit capital-partners.com.au.

Have a question? Email us ask@capital-partners.com.au.

This episode provides general advice only. We do not consider your personal circumstances when we share this information. Always refer to your financial adviser for advice about your personal circumstances. 

Capital Partners Consulting Pty Ltd AFSL 227148 trading as Capital Partners Private Wealth Advisers ABN 27 086 670 788.

Transcript

What A Will Actually Covers

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The will covers personal assets. Those things that I own personally: cash at the bank, real estate in my name, shares, cars, jewelry, gold.

Aden 0:11

What's the anatomy of a good estate planning? I know that's a big question.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Estate planning is not just doing a document. Estate planning is looking at the human being.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

How many families in your estimation have versus don't have even a basic will?

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Spend a couple of days a week at each other's places, you know, you might have a toothbrush in their bathroom and some shoes under the bed, but you weren't partners for life. You were just, you know, mates with benefits. So this is it.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

What happens then if you die without a will?

Aden 0:46

And what happens is that welcome to the Purposeful Investor Podcast. We're a podcast for successful families who want to make smart decisions about their money and their future and also avoid costly mistakes. We're here to make sure that you and the people you care about are okay no matter what, and also to set you up to live a great life. Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Purposeful Investor Podcast. Today I'm joined by Capital Partners founder, David Andrew. David, welcome to the podcast studio. Always good to be here, Aiden. And we've got one of WA's resident experts in wheels and estate planning, Morgan Solomon. Morgan, welcome to the podcast studio.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Oh good to be with you.

Aden 1:24

So we're going to be diving into the topic of estate planning, the A to Z of estate planning, with one of the specialists who will be able to talk through everything that we need to be across. But before we jump into it, we'd like to start off with a little win, and then I'll get Dave you to throw and give Morgan a little bit of an intro so our listeners know. You bet. Why don't we start with a little win? What was your little win? I know you've got a good one.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah, this is a this is a cracker. I love the little win segment, and I get so many people say to me, Oh yeah, I listened to the podcast, and you know, the such and such win. And so that's cool. Um it's a reminder um for our new listeners that uh that we all have things to be grateful for. And this one this week for me is really special because our son, youngest son Tim, um got engaged over the weekend to his longtime sweetheart Eleanor, and uh they're a great couple, and Robin and I are thrilled for them. So yeah.

Aden 2:19

Love it. I actually had um two friends also get engaged over that period. I think one of them actually knows Tim, so there must have been something in the water.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Aden 2:28

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Congratulations. Thank you, Dave. I I am gonna sound like the worst copycat here. Listen to this. So my little win is my son as well, who has just moved out of home for the first time. Nice. And the first two days, my wife cried constantly. It was the biggest upset that we'd ever had. And then two days later, we're both measuring up the room with the tape measure, and we've completely redecored it decorated it. Anyway, that he he has moved out with his girlfriend, also Eleanor. So a few of them around. I was convinced that the he would come crawling back home after about 48 hours, but he has loved it and he's blossomed into it. So it's a wonderful thing to see the kids grow like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Robert and I were chatting on our walk this morning, and she said, I think we I think we've done a good parent job as parents when your kids happily leave home and are settled and are independent. I think we thought about that, but I think it's a good measure. True. Yeah, yeah.

Aden 3:24

Rido, how about you? Uh mine is a personal win. So not last week, the weekend before, I was over in Tasmania. So I went there about 15 years ago on a sports trip. But um just going there, visiting Hobart reminds me a lot of Fremantle, very sort of similar decor, nice like cafes, trips, and restaurants, did a bit of the golf, did a few of the wineries, and I'll just say that when they've got the new footy team there, I think it'll be a very popular holiday destination. So always nice to get a little reset as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Did you take some money off your dad on the golf course?

Aden 3:54

I did, yeah. So I lost the first day and it was loser buyers lunch, but I managed to get him the next two days. So always happy with it.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Did you get to go to Mona?

Aden 4:03

No, we didn't have enough time for that, but I've heard that is Mona's great.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

And it's something you can do multiple times because there are some evergreen exhibits, but most of it changes and it's way out there. Some of it's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

I heard a rumour on that, by the way, that David Walsh, the owner, has a secret apartment inside. I don't think that's that secret. But he watches everyone. Oh, really? And and he removes the works that people like too much. Huh. Really? Get out. Replaces them with ones that are a little more obscure. Quirky. There you go.

Why Investors Need Estate Planning

Aden 4:34

Quirky. So let's get into the topic at hand today. So I'll give a little bit of an introduction to you, Morgan. And then Dave, why don't we sort of talk about how this topic actually relates to what we do and um where we see it. So Morgan, as I alluded to before, one of Western Australia's leading succession lawyers, more than 25 years of experience helping clients navigate wills, estate planning, probate, inheritance, all of that complicated stuff. You're the founding director of Solomon Hollett Lawyers, a firm in Perth that's been widely recognized as being one of the leading estate planning firms. So a fair resume, but Dave, what is what has this got to do with financial advice and investing and why have we brought Morgan on today?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, well, so many people come to us for financial advice, you know, air commas. And um it's sort of code for, you know, can you help me with my investments? But it's just about always the first meeting where we're just asking lots of questions, right? And taking lots of notes and trying to understand the people who have sat down in front of us and working out whether we can really come to the table and add significant value for for their family. And inevitably the question turns to the estate plan. And you know, so tell us a bit about your estate plan. Have you got something in place? They say, Estate what? And we say, Well, your wills, you know, your wills and your powers of attorney and all of those things that will keep your family safe if anything happens to you. And then there's three responses. Oh yeah, we've got all that sorted, which can mean anything. We'll we'll dive into that. Then, oh yeah, we really need to do something about that, um, because they've got nothing in place. Or or, and this is most common, yeah, we probably need to take a look at that.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Yeah, I've been meaning to get around.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, but yeah, yeah, we probably need to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what I find so rewarding, and we had this experience very recently, Robin and I, with Morgan and one of his team, and and just being able to sit and chat about what you want for your family is just the coolest thing. And what I've found is that it becomes the glue between us and the client. Uh the the the the the depth of care that we're making sure that the family is going to be okay no matter what is just powerful glue. It's it's it's really wonderful. And so for this episode specifically to your question, um I'm aware that everybody uh knows what the headline means, estate planning. But once uh you start to pick away and get below the surface, there's so much here. There's ten episodes here. Um we'll do it in a couple and have Morgan back and just to expand on this over time. But but this is this is really important stuff that our audience needs to know about. And how does it relate to purposeful investing? Well, well, there's no point having money if you're not protecting it. So it's all part of the whole safety net of what we can build for an affluent family.

Outcomes Legacy And Avoiding Chaos

Aden 7:47

So it's a good place to start. What's the anatomy of a good estate plan? I know that's a big question, but let's dive into it.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

And that is a massive question. But um it it I actually want to leverage on on something David said that this purposeful investing aspect, which I know is a cornerstone of capital partners, and it's it's really important because estate planning is not just doing a document. It's not just drafting a will, although, of course, a will is is almost invariably a fundamental plank of it. Estate planning is looking at the human being and unpicking their world and then putting it back together in a way that you know is then going to create an outcome. And it is this focus on the outcomes that is often missing in a lot of estate planning. So you have a lot of people that think, well, I've got a will. Yeah, sure, I did it 20 years ago, it's probably fine. Well, it might have been. It might have been okay 20 years ago, but the world has changed. And it's that looking at an item in isolation that is the risk in estate planning. So estate planning is, of course, focusing on, well, what happens to my worldly wealth after I die? Everyone is across that as a general concept. But it's also about two other important things. One is what is my actual legacy? Not just things, not just goods and property and shares and cash and all those things, which are of course critical. But what's the message, what's the flavor of my person that I leave behind? Is it a positive legacy? Is it a negative legacy? Am I controlling my affairs from beyond the grave, or am I creating a landscape of joy and harmony? These are controllable quantities. These are things you can build, these are things you can plan for. This is the the thing that I want people to remember. Because if you don't plan for it, David, you would have seen this a thousand times over as well, the result is an unplanned mess. It just doesn't fall into place. It just doesn't. We hope. We imagine that it will, but it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

We were chatting before we came on air about a a particular client situation where the husband died and um there was uh a draft will but not a not a complete. And um that resulted in two years worth of wrangling to sort that out.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

These things can last forever. And uh not to to mention the legal fees. Yeah. And and it pains me to say it because of course I'm a lawyer and this is my area of specialty. The costs can be eye watering. I mean, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in many cases to clear up messes that could have been dealt with with the stroke of a pen. It's just the the most horrific outcomes. Aaron Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

How many families in your estimation have versus don't have even a basic will? Let's call a basic will a basic estate plan. It's not really an estate plan, it's just a legal document. But how how many families do you estimate have nothing in place?

Intestacy And The Default Formula

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Aaron Powell Actually, we have data on this. Um there's national data, but we also took the opportunity last year to do a survey of just about a thousand Western Australians and surveyed them on a lot of these questions, what's most critical in in estate planning. And we know from repeated data, and this hasn't really changed over the last, well gosh, ever since I've been practicing, so over 25 years, that approximately 35 to 40 percent of Australians do not have a will. What we also found in our survey data, and this really interested us, was that there was another 14 percent who didn't know if they had a will, which I thought was a fascinating thing. And and I've I've interrogated that and tried to work out what that actually means. And I think that on the one hand, it means there's a bunch of people that, well, they know they don't have one, but they're a bit embarrassed to admit it. And then there's a group that did one so long ago they actually don't even know if it's around. And then there's another 10 percent on top of that whose will is at least 10 years old. And in our estimation, seeing this every day, after 10 years, the will is probably out of date. It's not doing the job it was originally planned for. So when you put all that together, you have this, let's call it 60 percent of Western Australians, this was Western Australian focused survey, but it it is emulated nationwide. Approximately six out of ten of us are kind of set up for a bit of a disaster. That's the problem. Which is which is just which is distressing, right? This is a this is a this is a social problem. Yeah. It's a legal problem, of course, but it's a social problem because these uh these estates, the money, the assets that are tied up in this, is not just about the successful handover of a house. This is about reliance by family members, spouses who need that house, who need access to that cash and uh assets and living expenses, and these things are all tied up. It's all in limbo. What happens then if you die without a will? One of the worst things I think that can befall a family is is what's called an intestacy. When you die without a will, you are intestate. And you you without being being without a will is the concept of intestacy. And what happens is that our Supreme Court imposes a formula on the person. And that is a formula set down in an old piece of legislation called the Administration Act from 1903. It's been updated. Just recently. It's been updated, but it is an old piece of of law. And the Administration Act sets down a formula, a strict formula as to who gets what of your goods and your assets, no matter the size of the estate, depending on who you've left behind. So what we often see is people think, I don't need a will because I'm married. I say, okay, so? Oh well that means my wife automatically gets it. It's just not the case. What happens is that the spouse gets the first, and it depends on whether you leave children or not. This is a complicated formula. If you have a spouse and children and you have no will, your spouse gets the first 500 odd thousand, I think it's five hundred and fifty, plus one-third of the rest. The kids get the other two-thirds. So the classic disaster here is the house is in the the the deceased's name. The spouse now gets five hundred and fifty thousand plus one-third of that house, and the kids get the other two-thirds. These kids are two years old. That house, that share of that house, is now owned by them in trust until they're 18. And there's no lit no changing that. On their 18th birthday, they are now two-thirds owners of the house. But before that even happens, here's what what happens in reality. The bank says, Well, we're not going to allow a mortgage to stand over that property when there's two th two-thirds of it is owned by two-year-old children who can't pay a mortgage, so you're in default. You need to refinance. And the surviving spouse says, Well, I can't. House has got to be sold. This is just a classic design. And that happens all the time.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Like clockwork.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Wow. This is this is hugely relevant for our young professional clients. You know, we yeah, as you know, we we didn't deal with affluent families, but we have a lot of young families who are going to uh are very successful already in their careers and they're building professional practices, whether it's in the law or medicine or whatever. And they are so busy that I can imagine this is one of those things that just gets overlooked. Do you see that, Aiden?

Aden 16:05

In your practice? Well, I'm doing the the numbers as well in terms of that's the roughly 60%. And I was looking back, it's probably been met with 10 to 15 new families this financial year. And I was sort of doing it, and the numbers sort of stuck up in terms of it as well. So they really there's that little bit of embarrassment if you haven't done it, and it's sort of like, okay, that's all right, that's what we're here for, we'll get the professionals, and then there's a lot where we haven't looked at it for 10 plus years, the kids were three or four when we did that, all these life events. So the numbers, like from my experience, definitely stuck up.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

So here's a question for you. Um, and it's a plug for purposeful advice. But once a client has been a client of yours for say six to twelve months, what's the likelihood that they will have a complete estate plan in place?

Aden 16:51

It's one of the first projects we do with we always prioritize it.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

99, 100, how many, how many? Yeah, 100%. So okay, good. 100% with that as well. Yeah.

Aden 17:02

I think the important piece is what we hear all the time, and I'm sure you've heard it, Morgan, countless times. Oh, you did that. We haven't looked at it, it's been in the bottom of the filing cabinet for 10 years. Yeah. Which happens, and as part of our role, we're not obviously the legal advisors, but we check in on the estate plan each year more just to say, are they still the right people in the right roles? Is everything still the same? Because obviously we have a bit of oversight of when things change in people's lives, and if they do, okay, great, you've got to speak to the right legal professional to update those things. But it's just such a common theme of people, yep, it's it's in the bottom of the drawer, we haven't looked at it for a while.

DIY Wills And AI Risk

SPEAKER_02 17:37

It's a critical role that the advisors play. Financial advisors and accountants very often are in this very, very intimate relationship with their clients. And they know the details and you know the pressure points. And being able to say to your clients, have you thought about this? Uh your world has changed a little every year, every couple of years, is such a critical piece and and is such a valuable thing for you to be able to do. Because we do find that an enormous amount of of our work, the uh clients that come to our firm, are coming directly from those advisors who have said to them, you need to sort this stuff out. And it's the advisors that have been able to convince them of the need. Because exactly, Aidan, as you're saying, a lot of people are, well, yeah, I did it. It's okay. I haven't read it in a while, but it's there somewhere. And it was good. It was okay 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago. Life moves pretty fast.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I've had not in recent times, but I've had people say, yes, we've got a will, and it's a post office will. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 18:53

I'm I'm shaking in my boots. The post office will is let me take a step back. I understand the rationale and need for these things to exist. A person needs to be able to take control of their own destiny and write their own will if they want. You shouldn't have to go to a lawyer. You shouldn't have to engage a professional. You should be able to do it yourself. The reality is almost nobody can do it themselves. The post office will is a source of enormous problem in the succession and the inheritance space. In fact, there was a very um prominent registrar, retired recently, registrar Sandra Boyle, um, a Supreme Court registrar who was one of the probate registrars, a woman of extraordinary intellect and uh and knowledge. And uh she had a view that they should actually be illegal. They are so difficult because they create so much mess. The reality is almost nobody fills them out properly. People end up, when they read it, starting to act as if they're a lawyer almost. And not a not a proper lawyer, but like some Latin scholar from the 15th century, and they start going to Google to find these uh phrases and things that flourish and they they draft these clauses that they I think people think sound loyally, but end up creating unbelievable ambiguities and difficulties in interpretation. I would have to say that the post office will is one of the worst false economies of all time, in my view. The costs of fixing it when it comes to court for probate are usually orders of magnitude greater than the cost of, you know, the best will available to humanity at the time. The modern equivalent of the post office will is the the chat GPT will. I can't ask you about that, yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr. This is fascinating stuff, Aiden. And and and I know that there is a place for AI, of course. There has to be, and it's moving so rapidly. And that place is probably at the bottom end of legal work, which can be productized and probably doesn't need, you know, the the the steely gaze of a senior practitioner over every line. But here's here's the problem. Well, here's an example. I put in to uh one of the uh AI engines uh a query to draft a building contract. It's not my area of law. I'm a complete novice in building law. And it spat out something that I thought looked really good. I thought it was this is a nice looking thing. And I handed it over to one of my uh co directors at the firm who is an expert in building law and said, Look at this, mate, you're out of a job. And he pulled it apart and saw holes that you could drive a truck through, which I couldn't see. Yeah. And he did the same to me. He said, Look at this will I've produced online. This is a bloody good thing, isn't it? I said, mate, this is a disaster. And I was able To pull it apart so easily and see the obvious gaps. This is the problem with AI. You don't know what you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Trevor Burrus So I'm thinking of my kids. And the reason I'm thinking that is that I know lots of our listeners are in that 30, 35-year-old age group. So they might have their super and they might have bought a house, but most of it's owned by the bank. They don't really have very much behind them at all, but they've got an amazing future ahead of them, incredible prospects for building wealth and a great life. Where at what point do our listeners need to be thinking about taking this seriously?

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Really important point. Really important thing to cover. There is a point at which everyone becomes an adult, and that's 18 years old, according to law, even though some of us never really grow up very well. But there is a point at which you have more assets than you think. David, you already mentioned super. So young 18-year-old chap got his first job, uh, got$2.50 in his super account, but he probably ticked a box when he signed it that says, Do you want life insurance for, you know, a dollar a week? And there's half a million bucks of life insurance. So already there's half a million dollars in a kitty that no one even really knows about. And putting the dollars aside, it is about control. And so one of the most distressing things that happens uh when a person passes is that there is a burdensome amount of boring administration, dealing with stuff, transferring assets, uh, filling out forms, engaging things, and one of those is a funeral. This is the executor's job. Now, if you don't have an executor, you have no one officially to do that job. And so you can end up with a significant fight. And one of those big fights these days is between the parents of a younger deceased person and their partner. And whether that partner is a de facto partner or whether that partner is just a boyfriend or a girlfriend, this features in the very first dispute that we have, which is who's going to take control of the affairs. Who's going to go into the house and box up his collection of trophies and matchbox cars and bits and pieces? Who's then going to organize a funeral?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Because the partner is probably thinking about the next of the domain, then.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

David, this is absolutely it. So you you have this formal uh ranking, which is an executor, or if you don't have a will an administrator, and then you have an informal ranking, which is called next of kin. And next of kin is really a very um uh uh loose uh aggregation of people, but uh a life partner is really number one on that list. The first argument that often happens is the parents say, Well, well, you're not a life partner, you're just uh his or her good friend. You didn't even live together. You spent a couple of days a week at each other's places, you know, you might have had a toothbrush in their bathroom and some shoes under the bed, but you weren't partners for life. You were just, you know, mates of benefits or whatever the kids call them these days. So this is the family should be. This is the family. The very first argument is down on superannuation. And this is this is a classic disaster, and this happens all the time because super funds have a very, very set view internally, which says, well, we should be giving money to the spouse first rather than the parents. And this question of is a de facto, is a partner a de facto, and therefore rises to be able to receive the super and the life insurance attached to it, is a big, big argument that is run through our courts, through firstly through the uh through AFCA, the uh Financial Complaints uh Commission, and then through our federal court. These disputes are wild and going on every day.

What Executors Really Do

SPEAKER_01 26:33

So I reckon it's really useful, Aidan, for us to come back to this idea of the anatomy of a will, because you were just talking about the executor role there. What do we what do people have to think about when they're thinking about a will? Obviously, we we would want them to come to you or come to us and we can have a conversation. But but let's just say we want to get them thinking about this. Where do they start? So an executor is the person who the executor is the person who stands in the shoes of the deceased.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

They are your representative on earth after you have gone and have all your legal powers. They are charged with the duty of gathering up your assets and dealing with them according to your will. If you don't have a will, and as we were talking about before, they are charged legally with the obligation, the duty to deal with them according to the intestacy rules, which is carved up according to that formula. Important to remember the executor does not have discretion here. They can't decide to rewrite a will. They can't decide to alter the intestacy rules. They just have a one path to follow. Give the assets according to the rules. But within that is a world of complexity. They need to gather up the assets, they'll probably need to sell some, transfer some, they need to pay taxes, they need to work out the liabilities that are still owing. Is there a bill still owing to the gas company, to the ambulance, to the pharmacy that needs to be paid? All of these things need to be done first. Final tax return. Shareholding that needs to be found, assets that need to be found. Often we we have clients that have assets all over the globe, and sometimes they're pretty well hidden, sometimes for obvious reasons, sometimes just because they are private people and don't like others seeing what they have, finding them. Cryptocurrency. How do you get control of that if you don't have a deliberate pathway to do it? A lot of young people have crypto and uh electronic uh uh access only assets, bank accounts in Singapore, property in Paris. Forget about those things. The stuff on the ground, how do I deal with the boxes of photos, the real estate, the shares, the things in the house? This is the executor's first job. And so when you think about it, it is a job of enormous responsibility and a job which is hard work.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

The way you put it, I reckon if I had to be the executor for someone, I'd be making one phone call. Morgan, what do I do?

Fairness Needs And Family Conflict

SPEAKER_02 29:22

We do have many, many clients that just come into us with just a box of papers, put it on the boardroom table, and then say, I'm I'm off, wake me when it's over. Yeah. Let us do it. There is a a a thousand jobs that need to be done. But the the other thing I hear repeatedly from people is had I known what it would entail to be an executor, I never would have agreed. I just never would have done it. It is enormous work and regrettably, often the thankless work. You can never truly please the beneficiaries as you hope. You hope you're doing the right thing for them, but deep down all they see is they could probably do it better.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Can we dig into that? So you so let's say we've identified who the executive is going to be, and then it's a case of, okay, well, what do I actually this is the willmaker I'm talking about. What do I actually do with my estate now? And so you have beneficiaries. The one thing I can tell you that is a hundred percent true of the families that we deal with, many of our listeners will relate to this because I'm talking about you. We do not want our kids to be in conflict over our assets when we die. We do not want our kids drawn into conflict. So tell us a little bit about how uh how that all works and how, you know, the idea that you've got in a family I'm thinking of, you've got, you know, a son who's doing really well, a daughter who's a professional living overseas doing really well, but then a second daughter who's been through a really tough marriage breakdown. Most parents, I think, start with the idea of a third, a third, a third. Let's just be fair and equal. Can you just let us know? Help us unpack all of that a bit.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

So what what you've just described there, David, is a very, very common scenario. And even though it's a common scenario, of course, it is unique to every person. And I want to emphasize that, that there is just no one size fits all in this program. Every will, whilst it might look the same, is of course different. It's designed to do different things. And it's because you you you actually start at the end, if you see what I mean. You you start with what is the dream, what is the goal, what is the desire for your assets? And you've just hit the nail on the head, which is usually it's, well, I just want everyone to be happy and get their fair share and everyone to live happily ever after. No fights, no dispute, no rancor. Brilliant. So how do we work backwards from that? It's unpicking that that then becomes interesting. So if we took your example, three children, uh, one of whom, let's say, is uh a brain surgeon earning a million dollars a minute, you know, uh huge wealth already, uh, one who is uh working hard but you know, keeping their head above water, and one who is in financial difficulty. Maybe they've had a divorce and have been taken to the cleaners, maybe they've fallen on hard times for various reasons. The desire of just about every parent I have ever met, and my own sense as a parent, is I want my kids to get equal amounts, because it is a reflection of my love for them. I treat them equally, I love them equally. But our law kind of has a slightly different view of this, which is that sure, you can do what you want with your assets, but your moral obligation is actually to provide for them in a different way depending on their needs. So if I put it this way, if my whole estate is worth a million dollars and I leave a third of that to my brain surgeon child who you know earns, you know, five million dollars a year, is three hundred thousand dollars going to change their world? No, not in the least. But an extra$100,000 or$200,000 or$300,000 to a child who is doing it really tough can be life-changing. And this is where the disputes come in. What's called the Family Provision Act disputes. These are the classic will challenges, where a person says, well, the will has not made proper and adequate provision for me. And what is proper and adequate is a very, very subjective analysis of every person at every time. So if I come back to this uh this uh uh illustration of the three children, how do I balance that? How do I create a world which provides a sense of harmony and yet addresses that moral obligation? There's no easy answer on this.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Aaron Powell And you don't you don't have to do that, right? So so the transfer of an estate from mum to dad and or mum dad to mum, depending on who is the the survivor. Is pretty straightforward. That's easy. That's the easy part. Then it's then it's the next the next generation of okay, the on the death of the last survivor, the money goes to the three children. It's really easy to say, okay, it's a third, a third, a third. But what you're then I'm hearing from you is you're leaving that generation open to challenge. And we're gonna talk a lot also. We're gonna talk a lot more about this on a different episode about what goes well, you know, when it all goes wrong. But I I I think that little conversation or part of the conversation demonstrates some of the the thinking that has to go into this to do it well, to really make sure that we're not setting our kids up for a tough time.

Aden 35:30

And communication. There's one story that sticks with me from one of the other advisors in the business. Really similar scenario to what you mentioned. Um, very successful one of the children, the other one was doing, needed a lot of help, but there'd been no communication from mum and dad saying, hey, we're going to help out such and such because they need it. You've got no need for money, but they were completely broken. Parents have passed away, they're feeling like I haven't got my fair share. Did mum and dad not care for me as much?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

So I think the communication piece is I 100% agree with you on that. That is the critical component that will drive success or failure of this concept. Socializing the realities and the truth of it with these adult children, not leaving them to discover it for the very first time when the body is six feet under and the will is being read, because the shock of seeing it at that point is exactly as you've said. Hold on, I get nothing in this will. Sure, I'm a multimillionaire, but that's not the point. Is it not reflective of their affection for me? Did they love me less? And we are off to the races with a fight. And even if that fight doesn't end up at court, the relationship between those children is probably irreparably damaged.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Which is so sad. It's so sad.

Non Estate Assets Super And Trusts

SPEAKER_02 36:45

It's not their fault. It is not and it was not the intention, it was not the fault. This is why every family is unique and every estate plan is unique, and these conversations are unique. We talk about this with clients, and we say, well, is this a conversation you can have? And some of our clients say, no, I cannot talk about this with the kids. They won't talk about it with me. Or I just don't want to. And we have some families that are so open about it, they talk about it every weekend. You know, they sit around the kitchen table and talk about who's going to get what and when and then and all of that. There's no right or wrong on this. This is equally valid at either end of the spectrum. But I know which camp I'd rather be in, the the camp that has active knowledge and expectation. Because you you make, we make, a lot of assumptions, especially about our kids, and we think they'll be fine with it, you know, the brain surgeon's son, he'll be fine. And yet he's not, because of this diminished expectation and this diminished uh uh um uh feeling of uh of affection that comes through rightly or wrongly. That is not the point. People feel that when they see a will that does not provide for them. These things are curable, and I think that's the message that leaving it to chance is what's going to create the mess. Actively addressing it is what will cure the mess. But it does require that intervention, shall we say. It does actually require sitting down and thinking about it and then making a plan for it, rather than just hoping that it'll be okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Something I'd like to do, Aidan, in the time we've got is um because we've covered a lot of ground already. But I think it'd be really useful to unpack a couple of terms that all of our listeners will probably have heard of. You know, things like testamentary trusts. What is a what is a testamentary trust and why why would one want to have a testamentary trust versus just I assume a simple will. But I think it'd also be useful people make a lot of assumptions. And one of the things I found very early on in my career as a young advisor was the discovery that your will only covers your personal assets. It doesn't cover a whole lot of other things. Now, for our listeners, many of whom will have companies and trusts, they'll all have superannuation. I think there needs to be an understanding where does the net fall in relation to estate planning around all of those different entities?

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Trevor Burrus really important topics. Uh let's come back to testamentary trusts because I love testamentary trust. Testamentary trusts are incredible. You're a trust nerd. I am a trust devotee. Let's come back to that in a second because I really want to cover off this fundamental point about what is an estate and non-estate asset, exactly as you've said. Our modern lives mean we own assets in thousands of ways. We own stuff in ways that our foreparents would never have even imagined. And the big one there is super, as you've said, and family trusts. The thing is, we don't really own super. We don't really own a family trust. We are members of a fund. We have an expectation to an amount that's held in a fund, but we don't own it. And that means that super does not fall in the will, because, David, as you've said, the will covers personal assets. Those things that I own personally, cash at bank, real estate in my name, and there's an exception here I'll get to, uh shares, cars, jewelry, gold, bits and things. Everything in my name falls in my will. Jointly owned property, though, and classically the family home is very often owned joint tenants by the parents. That doesn't fall in a will. That has its own automatic pathway that goes to the survivor. So it doesn't fall in the will of the first of those two people to die. It definitely falls in the will of the second. Now it's a hundred percent in the will. I just want to park that because this is a big issue when we come to uh blended families and stepfamilies and second and third spouses and such. But we have a whole raft of assets that simply don't fall into a will. A lot of my clients, particularly men, and particularly men of a certain uh stripe and age, uh, are on paper worth incalculably large amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet nothing is going to fall in their will, because they don't actually own it in their own names. They have trusts upon trusts, trustee companies, which are valueless entities, they're only worth a dollar each the shares, trusts upon trusts, uh uh tens of millions of millions in superannuation, assets owned in all kinds of uh exotic ways that mean that when they die, there's nothing in their will. Which is fascinating because these wills then have nothing to challenge. In fact, it's a an asset strategy used by some people to prevent a challenge against a will. I die with nothing. I move all my assets out before I go. Sounds easy, but of course there's always a price to pay on that. And that price is usually tax. In fact, that uh uh the the uh there was a case some years ago, mead and lemon, very, very important case. Um, that was the late Michael Wright, iron ore magnate. Uh, it was uh uh seen that his estate was worth at least a billion dollars. That means a billion dollars in his name fell into his will. This is what made it unusual, because he is classically the sort of chap who did not own anything. The the sort of the billionaire class often do not own much, it's all structured. So his will was so big that it encouraged claims, and there were legitimate claims brought against it. But what was revealed along the way in the case was that at various points he had taken very specific advice on should I move all my assets out of my name and therefore have no claims against it? And they said, well, that's a viable strategy, and they'd crunched the numbers, and the costs of moving the assets were about$350 million. And so on a purely rational basis, it's well, do I pay that tax or do I just let it be attacked? And an attack is never going to get to$350, so where's the smart play? So if we get back to this estate versus non-estate piece, the big two uh uh assets other than the jointly owned home that are not in the will are super and the family trust. Super has a very, very discrete pathway. When I die, my super is going to come out of the super fund. And the super has a trustee. And either you have a self managed fund, and I know that uh David, a lot of your clients have self managed. Self-managed super, or you are in a retail or an industry fund. But they all work pretty much the same way. And then the law applies equally across them. Your super either goes to a very small class of people that is determined by the trustee of the fund at the time, a spouse, a child, someone in what's called an interdependency relationship, or the executor of your will. That's really it. They're the only places it can go. I can't leave my super to a charity. I can't leave it to a grandchild or a brother or a sister, for example.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And nor in the case of a self-managed superfund. But can it be retained in the fund. Indeed. It has to come out. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And that that's an often misunderstood point that people say, oh, the super fund that just goes on forever. Trevor Burrus Exactly. But it doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Trevor Burrus, Jr. No, it has to come out. And so it either comes out because the trustee determines well, it comes out, but it it either comes out to one of those people that I've mentioned at the discretion of the trustee, or you make a binding death benefit nomination to force the trustee to pay it to your choice. It's one of those two. It's as simple as that. If you don't do your binding nomination, then the trustee will make up its own mind. So in my case, then, as me as an individual, I've got a choice.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Sounds like I've got a choice to remain silent, in which case the trustee has got to make a call. And I imagine that would probably go to Robin. Or I can put in place a binding nomination to make the trustee give it to Robin. Or I can put a binding nomination in place to make the trustee pay it to my estate.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Yes. Or to your children. Even though the So without getting down too much into the weeds, children remain able to receive super. It's just that once they're over 25, it's not tax effective for them. Yeah. But it is definitely tax effective for a spouse, regardless of age.

Aden 46:04

So yes, those are your choices. Let's jump in. And that's really important with um second marriages in particular, when it's sort of where you want to look after the sp spouse but also the kids. That's a really important tax consideration that we see all the time.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Trevor Burrus, Jr. People people in blended families need really need to pay attention to this. We're going to talk about that in another episode. But that that is just so important.

SPEAKER_02 46:25

The blended family is one of the most complicated things we deal with. And it's not out of design, it just is. But Aidan, to your point about the blended family and super, sometimes that's also a really useful way to make sure we can get that super to the spouse without the children from the first marriage challenging it. We know, for example, that in those relationships there is often a lot of dispute. Second spouses, third spouses, the step stepparent, the evil stepmother, the evil stepfather. The relationship can be bad, and we know that we need to keep it out of a challengeable environment. There are ways to do it. Getting back to the non-estate asset piece, family trusts. Family trusts are now ubiquitous. It's about everyone has a family trust or two these days, it seems. People forget that again they do not fall into the will. It is about control. Who do I put into control of that trust when I'm not in control of it? But otherwise the assets don't move. They stay in that trust. What matters is that people sit in different chairs and control the trust. And if I put the wrong people in control, it'll be a disaster. Or if I don't plan for control, it'll be an even greater disaster. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

So that's just another layer of the estate plan, talking about the anatomy of an estate plan. It's one thing to determine where your personal assets are going to go. But if you do have non-estate assets in the form of a trust or a company or a superfund, you need to have some way of directing the traffic as to who controls those entities.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And this analysis. Can you do that via the will? Well, you can. You can. Sometimes it's the easy option. To try and make a relatively complicated issue as simple as I can, you have to go back to the actual trust deed for your family trust. And they're all very different. All very different, and especially the old ones going back to the same thing. Some of these older trusts that we see, especially the rural families back in the 60s, were adopting these, and they are, gee, they were pretty wild, these documents. They say some pretty crazy things and they're very, very hard to interpret. But this is the foundational rule book for that trust. And it will say you can do X and you can do Y and you cannot do Z. You have to follow that rule book. And some of those trusts say you can appoint the new controller of your trust via a will. Some of them don't. So it's critical that that that trust is actually looked at as an uh uh an individual piece of analysis for that person. Trevor Burrus, Jr. No one looks at trustees. No one looks like that. Except trust lawyers. Except trust over them every day.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But there must be so many estate plans that are actually in breach, I guess, of the Trevor Burrus.

Testamentary Trusts Explained Simply

SPEAKER_02 49:22

It pains me to say it, but for a number of years, a very great number of trust variations were prepared by uh accountants and others without seemingly looking at the trusteed, and they were just a pro forma. And that proforma has not complied with the terms of many trusts, and so the variations themselves are invalid. This came to great public attention uh a decade or so ago in a a very big uh uh Supreme Court case here, the McCanty case, that underpicked all of that and made us really refocus on trusts and trust variations. But it is a massive issue, massive problem.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

Testamentary trusts. I do not want to let him off the hook on the Trevor Burrus. No, testamentary trust.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

Um how long have we got? Because a testamentary trust uh uh concept can go very deep. But I I want to reaffirm the importance of testamentary trusts in our modern lives and modern landscape. The concept is is actually disarmingly simple. A testamentary trust is merely a trust that comes into existence on the death of the trust maker.

unknown 50:39

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

So similar to a family trust.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

Similar to a family trust, except a family trust you build and it's in force right now. It's on foot. What's called an uh intervivos trust, a trust made during life. Testamentary trust just means that it only exists on death. This is one of these interesting legal fictions in a way, because you drafted it in the will, and the will has, you know, 30 odd pages of trust clauses, just like a normal family trust, but it doesn't actually exist. It's just a concept waiting there in the wind for this magic triggering moment, which is the death of the will maker. And at that very moment, this trust crystallizes and becomes real. And then it is ready to do its job, which is to receive the assets for a beneficiary, protect them, cover them. You can craft a testamentary trust to be as creative as any other trust. You can craft a testamentary trust to be wholly wondrous and unique or be very, very simple. The long and the short of it is if I leave, or let me, I'll give you my own personal example. In my will, I've left everything to my spouse in a testamentary trust. This is not because I distrust her. It's simply because rather than leaving it to her in her own hands, I leave it to her in her trust. She now has the opportunity to exploit a bunch of opportunities that this trust presents for her, one of which, one of the main ones, is asset protection. I've left everything to her in a shielded manner. If she repartners, and I expect that she probably would within 24 hours after I've gone. No, darling, I don't mean that. If she repartners and then new partner says, that's it, I'm leaving, and I want to take you down to the family court and I want half your stuff, the trust assets are shielded from that attack. It's amazing. It also shields her from the attack of, well, if she went bankrupt, these assets are protected. The other great thing that it has is that she can distribute income from that trust to other beneficiaries, just like you can in a family trust. So she can continue to distribute income to our children and get the tax benefit of that. I've said it before, and I'll say it again uh uh to many, many people. If I were to die and inherit, or rather, if I were to inherit, I would want it in a testamentary trust. It is all upside, no downside.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

What about our young professional listeners? So they're you know high income, probably high debt, probably got high life insurance needs. So the estate, whilst they look at their balance sheet today, it might not be particularly big. But if someone if if one of the mum or dad dies, once the life insurance proceeds are counted, the estate is potentially really substantial in the millions, multi-millions of dollars. How about testamentary trusts for young children?

SPEAKER_02 53:56

The overarching concept at law with children is simply this. You are not an adult. You are actually uh under what's known as a legal disability until you are 18. You are not allowed to inherit. You cannot inherit until you are 18. So if I have a three-year-old child, I cannot leave them anything. I can only leave them something in trust. The question is, have I left a good trust or a disastrous trust? Who is the trustee of that trust? What are their powers? What are their obligations? Who's going to keep them honest? What are their investment powers? So for anyone that has a child under 18, the testamentary trust is critical. It's absolutely critical. But the other thing is this: having seen so many inheritances pass hands through my work and dealt with families as they move the money through when one party dies, an 18-year-old coming into an inheritance, even a modest inheritance of a few hundred thousand dollars, can actually be ruinous for that child. The burden of the money can overwhelm them.$100,000 in the hands of an 18-year-old who has a known predilection for gambling or a drug problem or some significant life difficulties can be the worst possible thing that could happen to them. Let alone a million dollars or two or five or thirty. Who is going to tell them how to run the show? Nobody at 18. The beauty of a testamentary trust is you can push that age out as far as you like. It doesn't have to be. The law says 18 is the minimum. And if you don't create a testamentary trust, it is 18. It's 18 on their actual birthday. They get the cash. You can build a testamentary trust that says, well, they can only become uh they can only get their share when they're 21 or 25. More relevantly, more frequently, what we see is at 21 or 25, the child doesn't just get the goods. They become one of the trustees alongside my chosen professional or my specially appointed person I've put in there. And they'll jointly run the show. And they'll jointly run the trust until that child is let's say 35. At which point they can have the reins themselves. And hopefully they have learned how to move money and deal with assets and the burden of having money at that point.

unknown 56:36

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

But importantly, on the way through, even though they haven't directly inherited the money themselves, let's say the three-year-old example, right throughout their life, they can be beneficiaries of the trust and receive income. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And so that really helps in terms of the funding of day-to-day living expenses, school fees, and the like.

SPEAKER_02 57:00

Oh, indeed. The fundamental point of the testamentary trust is not to corral a large amount of money and put it into a bank and just have it accumulate, and when the child hits 25, they get a big slice. It's actually to underpin their life and maintain them. And the general heads, as contained in most testamentary trusts, say that the capital and income can be used for the maintenance, education, and advancement in life of the beneficiary. And that, interpreted by your trustee, can mean such things as buying them a house, sending them to school, paying for holidays. One child, you have three different kids with different needs. One child wants to go to a specialist school in Zurich. Okay, off you go, we'll pay for that. And airfares and living and uh accommodation costs, and I'll buy you a car when you turn 17, and you can have an income and you can have spending money. Very, very broad heads.

SPEAKER_01 58:06

So this is incredibly important for our listeners who are grandparents.

SPEAKER_02 58:12

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

Be thinking about this in terms of not just leaving your children money in a will, but how are you thinking about your grandchildren and how the how the estate might benefit the grandchildren?

unknown 58:27

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

I know that in in another session we're going to talk about disputes. Grandchildren's disputes are one of the fastest growing in our Supreme Court. And one of the reasons for that, David, is exactly as you've you've you've alluded to, that a lot of grandparents are already providing for their grandkids. And the biggest form of provision that is currently being made is school fees. Grandparents are putting five, six, sometimes more grandkids through private school at 40 grand a pop. It's a lot of money. Because the parents can't afford it. No way. You know, these things are expensive. There's no two ways about it. And if those grandparents fell off the edge of the world, those school fees suddenly are not there to be paid. And it creates a significant entree to a claim by the grandkids to say, well, actually, shouldn't I have been provided for in the same way that I was being looked after during life? So making accommodation for those kids in the will via a testamentary trust is the smart way to control that money and to provide it in a way that you, as the willmaker, want it to go, not leave it to chance. We've talked before about the idea of ruling from the grave. And we have drafted wills that are incredibly controlling, and estate plans that are very, very controlling instruments that set up long, rigid protocols for who gets what and when, drip feeding money in small amounts, putting all sorts of conditions on when a person will and won't get money.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

I suspect that's not your favorite.

Trustees Control Ages And Communication

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

It is not. I don't uh love that. We will do it. I try to encourage people not to, by the way, but sometimes there are reasons, and sometimes there are good reasons for it. But generally, we like to create an environment that just gives maximum flexibility and discretion to the trustees to work out on a day-to-day basis, if necessary, how should I use this money for the benefit of this, my beneficiary who I am charged with looking after? Which gets back to something we were talking about before with the executors. Trustees, executors, often the same people, don't have to be, but often they are. Your choice of trustee in this sort of story is one of the hardest decisions you'll make in your estate planning. There's no two ways about it. Who do I trust to look after my child's money and really their welfare for what could be 20, 30 years? That's a big job. But put the wrong person in that position and it can all be unwound. The weakness, if there is one in our system, is not the documents and it's not the legal work, it's the humans. The human beings can be the weak point. We are fallible creatures by design. Put in two trustees rather than one, and you have doubled your chances of success. Two sets of eyes looking over a balance sheet, two sets of eyes making decisions on what constitutes a good spend or a bad spend is almost invariably more than the sum of its parts. It's better than twice as good as one set of eyes. Little things like that, little decisions made now, have an arc that goes so long that the end result is so much greater than that small decision. But focus on these small things now and the end result is uh is happiness and reward.

Aden 1:02:10

And I will just touch on as well, one of the conversations I know I find I'm having a lot, and you're probably seeing, is almost that age of entitlement um for the adult children. And looking back at wills that were drafted in the early 2000s, like you said, it was 18, you're an adult, you can control it. But at least from our clients, I'm feeling like they don't want to burden people. So it's the conversation, it's gone from 18, 21, 25, 30. And one of the ongoing conversations is do you think the kids are ready at this point? And that's sort of it's a really good conversation to have. And that's why we check on it every year as life changes. Are they responsible enough?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:47

Is the family at a stage where and if not, you can tinker with it like you said, well Morgan and I and Robin are having exactly this conversation because in our estate plan, we set it up years ago, some years ago, where the boys were just emerging from university studies and those those sorts of things. So we did put a trustee in to work with them, who ultimately had the final say. Now we're looking at it and saying, well, 32, 30, 28, they're they're all established, they're smart guys, they're they're very successful in their own right. Hmm, maybe we need to rethink this.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

And and it may not be the same for for all, too. And Aidan, you've you you've you've absolutely hit the nail on the head about this this time that passes, because one of the things that changes parents' views significantly is the spouse or partner of their child. So uh if I have, you know, the three kids and one of them has married someone who I do not believe is the right person, and I worry that they are going to try and change my child's view on money, and perhaps you know, there's a colloquial phrase that we all know called the gold digger. I see it. I see it all the time, and it is real. There are professional husbands and brides out there. If they have that sort of influence on the child, you have to seriously consider whether I'm going to hand the reins over to that child until there is an alteration in the system. These are difficult conversations. They really are. Parents know, though, invariably. Every time I sit with parents of adult children and we talk about this, which is every day, they know. They know where the risk points are in their kids' relationships, and they see the the the ones that are solid and the ones that are a little weaker, and the ones that had that need specific focus and function. And it does not have to be equal. I can have one child that I can say, you can run your trust at 21. You're a financial whiz kid already. And I have one who I say there's no way you're ever going to be able to run your trust. You're just not up to it. Sometimes that can feel a little heavy-handed, but it has to be a unique analysis of the person.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:10

And looping back to an earlier point that you made, Aidan, about communication, is don't spring that knowledge on them as a surprise. Oh, indeed. Let's have the conversation during your lifetime. Because I've had conversations with adult children who are under some form of impediment, whether it's an addiction or whatever. And you know, in my experience, they've which is not vast, but it's it's you know, I've had this a few times, they're actually pretty good about it. You know, you're right. I think mum and dad are right. I think that's right. I think I probably do need help. And so having the communication and the conversation up front sounds to me to be the critical ingredient.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

Just uh released or about to release this week, later this week, our new report, 2026 report. And one of the fascinating findings in there, I have to mention this report's embargo until it actually goes out, so you're hearing about it actually the very first time here. But one of the key findings within that is data around this exact point. Are families having this conversation? Because there is this vast trench, this chasm between the crew that are leaving the assets, in particular the boomers and the silent generation, and the group that are receiving the assets, X and millennials. And within there, there is a massive gap in this conversation that isn't being happened because expectations are not aligned. And this is going to drive, is driving, enormous dispute.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:51

What a segue to a later episode about what happens when uh estate planning goes wrong.

Listener Questions And Closing

Aden 1:06:58

I think um all of our listeners will agree it's a real privilege to have someone of Morgan's caliber on the podcast. And I know we use the iceberg analogy a lot in terms of wealth management and financial planning, but if we think about it, sort of the will is the the tip of the iceberg, and a lot of what we've um unpacked today is what lays beneath the surface. And I know there's probably lots of questions that will come out. So as we always say, we love it when our listeners um give us some feedback, send three any questions that you have um through to the podcast email, which is ask at capitalhyphenpartners.com day. We'll also, if that report's available, we'll leave a link to that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:34

Great.

Aden 1:07:35

And I know Solomon Hollett do, or you used to do, a really good chart that says what actually happens when you die in Testacy, which just maps that out.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:42

So Well, well, there are some brilliant uh resources on the Solomon Hollitt website. So Hollett Solomon Hollett Lawyers.com.au. But if you Google that, it'll come up because they're prominent. Um there are some amazing resources on the website for anyone who wants to dig a little bit deeper and and and get an education before picking up the phone and speaking to one of um Morgan's brilliant professionals.

Aden 1:08:11

And as we know, if you can like and subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode, that would be great. David, Morgan, thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

Absolute pleasure.

Aden 1:08:20

Always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Purposeful Investor Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. We also love it when you send through any feedback, comments, or questions through to the podcast, and be sure to share it with friends, family members, or colleagues who you think would benefit from a listen. Both Aidan Wilkins and David Andrews are authorised representatives of Capital Partners Consulting Proprietary Limited. We operate it under the Australian Financial Services Licence of 227 148.