Tara (00:57):
Well, thank you everyone for joining us this week for episode 11 of the Art of Estate Planning podcast. And today Carrie and I are talking all about helping business owners understand their complex succession needs. So this is actually a topic that one of our lovely listeners, Lydia suggested and sent in. So she had an instance where she's seen a number of sole directors of trading companies just show a bit of resistance or not really take seriously what is going to happen if they die or lose capacity and just they don't want to necessarily accept that they have to do more than the average member of society when it comes to their estate planning. So yeah, she said, what are some ideas for helping to simplify because dealing with some complex topics and scenarios for them. So what are some ideas for helping to simplify this conversation and really get our message across without necessarily fear mongering or putting on that slack of the risk, but how can we actually get that message across that they really do need something more usually than just a will and a power of attorney? So Carrie, you are here again today. I am so thrilled you've joined me and this is a topic that you have a lot of experience in.
Carrie (02:20):
I like that you say a lot of experience. I dunno how I feel about that because I'm not as experienced as some of the wonderful people that listen and join us, but it's certainly something I'm quite passionate about and really enjoy. So I think that for me, I've got a couple of comments here. My major comment is that you've got to go into this with confidence. And I say that because you are not a lawyer that does wills. You are an estate planning lawyer. An estate plan is so much more comprehensive than just a will and that's really important to understand and sometimes it's hard for us to swallow because there's a lawyer down the road who mostly does property but just does wills as well. They're selling their wills for $300 a pot. But that's not you. That's not your client base. You've got to go into this saying, no, actually I'm an estate planning lawyer.
(03:07):
And that's actually something that I use when I speak to clients at the start of a meeting is I'll always explain to them that estate planning is comprehensive while yes, I'm here to help you do your will and power of attorney, not everything that you own is going to be governed via a power of attorney in a will. And so I say to them, I appreciate that and hope that you redo your documents before you ever need to rely on anything. I'm going to to prepare for you. I hope you live forever. But certainly the chances are that you will update your documents again before you need to rely on say mine and please make sure that you see an estate planning lawyer, you don't see a lawyer that does a will and that shows the client that I'm actually interested and invested in then getting a proper solution rather than just trying to sell them a product, if that makes sense.
(03:56):
I don't mind who they go to as long as that person does a comprehensive estate plan. So I think having that confidence and showing the client that you are caring about getting them a holistic solution is really important. And a big part of that is also looking at how you actually educate the client around that concept that not all of your assets are governed and also that there's a cost of doing business. So let's talk about the education kind of piece around pre provided materials. So I think for example, touching base, when I first speak to a client, I get an idea about whether they have these assets and I'll usually plant the seed saying Listen, absolutely happy to help you out with a will and power of attorney. Just being aware that often those assets in business structures aren't going to be governed via your will, but we'll talk about that more if you decide to go ahead.
(04:49):
They can then make it really clear in your scoping documents what's covered and not what's not covered, and make sure they understand what is actually going to be governed using other education materials like flyers like I had an estate planning roadmap that I used to use that kind of set these things out. So for those clients that like to read materials before meetings and then in the meeting itself I share a slide that divides the assets into three columns, being personal assets that are governed via the terms of your will, assets in stride structures that aren't governed via the terms of your will. And then superannuation. And I'll explain to clients, a holistic estate plan involves preparing documents to match the strategy for each of those three columns. No matter what the strategy is, we actually have to prepare all three. And I think that when I prepare my pricing, even if I know they've got a business structure, I'll often just do the pricing just for the will power of attorney letter of wishes, the bare bones, because then when I tell them in the meeting, this is kind of extra steps that's already sold them.
(05:57):
Okay? And what I mean by that is that when we talk about discretionary trust, those sorts of things, all those deeds are so different. Sometimes you don't have that deed when you issue pricing. And so I don't want to tie myself into something that's going to be really complex if I don't dunno what that is yet. And so I issue the pricing just on really bare bones and then in the meeting I explained that three approach and I go through each of those columns in a lot of detail. We talk about how we're going to draught the will, looking at testamentary trust versus to non testamentary trust wills. I'll then talk about how trusts are controlled, how companies are controlled, whether I think that in your particular scenario we need to do extra things. I'll treat entity succession as a whole separate topic within that estate planning discussion. So I think it's beholden on us to actually explain to them and give them the education they need to make the right decision.
Tara (06:52):
And I love that table approach as well. And yeah, I think if you are like, okay, this is the will column and this is the not the will column, your business is sitting not in that will column, so your will is not going to touch it. I love using the diagrams and we spoke about this in the last episodes around the 15 ways to maximise profit diagrams can be so powerful I think to communicate these tricky concepts and for people to visualise and go, ah, this is separate. It really depends I think on how sophisticated your client is. Accountants, I dunno if we have any accountants listening, but I think it's like a recurring issue for them in terms of the business money. It's not your personal money, but even for me, and I know this, I used to give division seven a advice. I understand the separation of legal entities and the corporate veil intimately, but I still kind of feel like that business money is my money and it's really hard to break that disconnect. So depending on where your clients are, if they're newer in this journey and they don't have a lot of infrastructure for their business set up, it can be a really hard concept for them to get their head around. And I think the education piece just kindly like reiterating it in different ways that will suit their learning style is really going to help.
Carrie (08:26):
I think also Tara too, you need to use anecdotes about scenarios that are similar to the clients so that they understand the very real impact that these things have. They might not want to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a company power of attorney, but do they also want to leave their employees in their firm or in their business in the lurch just because they didn't want to pay a couple of extra a hundred dollars. Now explaining to them who's going to pay the employees on payday, if you are the sole director and sole shareholder of a company and you pass away, do you know how long it takes to actually get a new director appointed? It's not quick. And then that person has to go and get appointed in charge of bank accounts, in charge of STP, whether it be MYOB or whether it be Xero, get control of those particular things.
(09:16):
If you can take that first step of having to be appointed in those roles out by having something like a corporate power of attorney, it really helps the staff that are continuing there as well. So yeah, again, I think we talked about this briefly in the last podcast. It might've been the one before, we just caught it in that one, but I had a person who passed away and they had three employees and a business and the surviving spouse couldn't even get control of the payment acceptance programmes and software and hardware and so they couldn't take payment for ages. It took weeks. If you've got no money coming in, how do you pay staff? So I think that when we talk to clients as well, we need to find very real examples of what happens if you don't do this because I think it's all well and good to kind of put it in your off risk statements when you send things to clients saying we told you to do a power of attorney and you decided not to. You need to appeal to that client on a way, on a level that they're going to understand.
Tara (10:23):
Yeah, I love that. And I think we often feel like we have to be the one telling and standing up the front or sitting there going this, this, but I do think it's pretty powerful if you just ask some questions, what do you think would happen with the business if you died? Okay, and now what? That's not quite how it works. They would need to get probate and that can take two months in a smooth transaction. So what do you think could happen in that two months time if you didn't make any sales and would your staff still hang around after not being paid for two months?
Carrie (11:06):
That's actually what happened here, Tara, in that the staff left because not only did they have concerns around getting paid, they had job insecurity because the wife was now stepping into this role rather than the actual person that was there doing all the work. So you're right, it's the end of your business sometimes if you don't have good succession mechanisms in place.
Tara (11:26):
Yeah. Well let's think about it in the context of a law firm, a sole practitioner with a law firm and you die. Okay, what about the clients where you're partway through their matters, you owe them to have this completed, especially if you are doing something transactional with deadlines and everything, okay, yeah, no one's paid your staff. Are your staff going to get new jobs? They're probably not going to keep working for fee free and stressing. What about your suppliers? If you've got a business where you need product and you're not paying them, I do think just asking them to talk it through and for them to understand the consequences or and incapacity can be even worse sometimes what if you're in a coma? Do people, I don't know how common it is, people going into COAs, but say you're in hospital out of action for a long time, weeks or a month or something and you can't do anything and then you do recover and you need to come back and you've got to resurrect the ashes of your business and whatever's left off it and build it up.
(12:36):
I do think sometimes it's easier to just put all of the legal mechanisms to the side and just focus on what's this look like for you to get them across the line. And I do even wonder, speaking of those legal mechanisms, how much detail do we really need to go into? Sometimes we can overwhelm people by explaining every nuance, and I know you do need to explain it in your sign off letters and everything and when you're taking instructions, but I do think there can be some skill developed in terms of getting the balance right about having the discussion in a way so that you can get quality instructions in the client understands, but also not overwhelming them with the minutia of the technical detail that we for instance would be thinking about and going into.
Carrie (13:34):
Yeah, I think you're right. We've got to have those important statements in what we send to clients. I think it's a whole separate thing about what we do in the backend to actually make sure we're across and understanding the exact mechanisms. So I know again, Tara, with a lot of your materials with some of the precedents that you purchased, there's discretionary trust review checklist so that you can look at some of those mechanisms and understand them. And as I said, it's not, you can only look at what you know. So when a client sends you a comprehensive trust deed, they might not send it to you until you've already prepared the will and power of attorney. They might not send it to you until after the first meeting or even then sometimes your scope of work might just be to do the will and power of attorney and then once they realise that, oh, hold on, all our stuff inside that trust is not covered.
(14:26):
Actually I do want Carrie to look at and I'm happy to pay the cost to do that. I don't think you necessarily need to have all the answers on day one of receiving everything because what you don't know what they're going to want under their estate plan and then you don't know what they're going to want for that trust or that company. They might not care that the entity has to be wound up. That might be their plan. I've certainly seen that before, but I think that having some of those systems and processes underneath so that you can understand the technical stuff, but then as you said, not necessarily having to do a technical spew out onto the client about what that looks like.
Tara (15:02):
Yeah, I agree with you. When I was practising preparing wills, I would often do say the family trust succession or whatever it was as almost like an add-on at the end. And so in the signing meeting, that's when I would probably, I'd lay the foundation in the earlier meetings and say, we're going to look at this and put some thoughts together for you. But then in the signing meeting, that's when I would be like, look, some succession of this is covered in your will, but I don't like to deal with family trust succession in just the will because one, we're only dealing with death as an event. We are not dealing with loss of capacity, so we're only really have half a plan in place. Your will is a public document that gets submitted to the court for probate and we should deal with this in a private trust related document.
(15:57):
And vice versa, if you're dealing with trust succession in the will, that's technically part of the trust deed. That's a trust document now. So when the bank is saying, I'm doing a know your client review and we need all the documents relating to the trust, do you want to hand over your will to the bank as well? Let's just keep them separate. We can deal with much more robust and comprehensive contingency plans if we deal with it in a separate document compared to in the will. There's a lot of persuasive reasons why family trust succession shouldn't be dealt with in the will or simply can't be dealt with in the will depending on the terms of the deed. And I would make that case to them in that last signing meeting and then we would extend the scope of work or issue a new quote to do it as an extra after the will's signed. So I think we're saying the same thing about how we like to approach it.
Carrie (16:55):
Yeah, I think another point there about dealing with it separate to the wheel is that not everybody always has the same wishes around who controls particular entities. Like if they've got three trusts, they might want to keep the will being divided, a third, a third, a third, but they might want each particular trust to go to a particular child. And if they change their mind about any of that, they don't have to necessarily then go and update the will. They can just update that unilateral document or there's ways that you can compartmentalise changes that they want to make by having those separate documents as well.
Tara (17:31):
And I mean this is the thing, it's hard. I was listing trying to list down some of the possible solutions that we might recommend, and it really does depend a lot on the nature of the business and the legal structure that they've got to set up from things like shareholder agreements that has rights of preemption in it, where I know Lydia's question was about sole directors, but this same conversation extends to people who are in business with others, insurance funded by sell agreements with those put and call options funded by insurance, the need for key person insurance, which isn't really an estate planning issue, but it comes into making sure that there is an appropriate plan in place. And then we've got family trust, succession, deeds, entity, powers of attorney, what else am I missing? You can deal with gifts of shares in the will. And...
Carrie (18:32):
I think also Tara too, we're underestimating the value of a business letter of wishes as well in the scenario that I was talking about before, a wife that was very much not involved in the business aspect of the business knowing what they would want you to do. So I think that that helps. A letter of wishes doesn't just have to be personal. A letter of wishes can be a direction about how we want the business managed as well. I think that the legal documents certainly serve a very good purpose, but a lot of what we see in the estate administration space is almost like an asking of why or wanting to see reasoning behind some things.
Tara (19:12):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. And I've written down here and I think it's worth discussing now because it potentially applies to a lot of our listeners. Carrie and I are both lawyers registered in Queensland, so the Queensland Law Society guidance is the one that we are most familiar with, and they have issued specific guidance for sole practitioners and law firms with sole directors. And when you look at their guidance, the first thing they sort of acknowledge is firstly the businesses of a nature where you need someone qualified with a principal practising management certificate. Have I used the right term there? I think I have. You need to have done the practise management course and have a principal practising certificate. And secondly, so most people's spouses don't qualify for that unless you've found love in the law. And secondly, the chances of your spouse who is going through one of the worst events in their entire life, being able to just step into your business, deal with all of that stress, the mayhem, the chaos, and know how to, it's a huge crisis for the business to have lost their key person. And while they're going through such a personally difficult and challenging time, I just don't think you can really even expect a spouse who is mourning to even shoulder that burden necessarily. Maybe that's your only option, but I really think it's worth planning that through thinking that through and thinking about what kind of support are they going to have. And I'm just thinking about couples, what about when you both die or people who aren't in a couple and it's like your parents or your siblings or people well removed from the business, like what the hell?
Carrie (21:15):
Yeah, no, I redid my documents before I went away on holiday recently because I'm changing a few things about the way I'm working and I just sat here thinking, having lost both my parents, now I'm the holder of all of this intergenerational knowledge on the structures that my father left behind. We're still in negotiations with my father's business to exit him out of that and his interest, my poor brother having to pick this up, I've got to show him where things are at. So it's not just, as you said, it's not just about husband and wife stuff. And I think too, we're talking obviously here about sole businesses, but we are dealing with people that are in business with other people as well. And often we'll have people come to us that have just set up this business and they've got an accountant, so they've got all the right structures, but they haven't got a shareholder's agreement or anything like that in place.
(22:08):
And we call them fair weather plans for a reason because you don't really want to have to go to that document if you don't, but if you need them by God, you need them. Again, putting a bit of a story over the top of this, my father was a director of a large firm in southwest Queensland and he was a key person. He was one of the major shareholders. And what we're so glad is that there's this underlying legal document because as far as we're concerned that business is our family. The current managing partner has seen me grow from a tiny child. The previous managing partner who's still the major equity partner introduced to my parents. And so we don't want it to be about any of that horrible legal stuff. They're my family. I want to make sure that they know that we're here to help them with whatever we want.
(22:58):
And the beautiful thing is that we've got these nice underlying documents that kind of set the process out. So obviously we're lawyers, we're always thinking about those bad stories, but sometimes it's the soft stuff that really matters. It's the making it easy on the people that you're leaving behind to just focus on the important stuff of thinking about the person that you've lost and not what they didn't do. So when we are starting up businesses and we want to keep money down, we think about not doing some of these documents. If we can show clients some of those good and bad processes where it's worked really, really well and where it's not worked well, hopefully that will push them forward to thinking about this baby that they've grown this business. Are they prepared to give it all away for the sake of not paying a couple of hundred dollars for a power of attorney?
Tara (23:47):
Yeah, it's such a good point, Carrie, as you were talking about the business where your father was a partner in, it made me think if you did not have those agreements in place, firstly you could just be sitting there going, great, we're not going to contribute anything to this business, but I'll still take our share of the profit please. And they can't really get you out of there besides negotiation and that's the risk. Do you just want to keep the continuing partners just have to keep showing up and this is probably the discussion to have to people who could be the continuing partners. Do you want to just have to keep funnelling a portion of your profits off to the family of your ex-business partner and they're not doing anything or contributing to it?
Carrie (24:35):
I sometimes turn that argument around the other way, Tara and I say, who do you want to be in business with? Do you want to be in business with their children or their wife?
Tara (24:43):
Yeah. What if Perry's turning up into the office on Monday going, where's my desk?
Carrie (24:49):
I own 51% of this keynote.
Tara (24:53):
I think we're going to do an audit of our processes, our systems. I'm going to turn this place around and they're just like, "get out of here", "Who are you?"
Carrie (25:04):
So I think it's sometimes the best way to tell a client is not like what their business partners will have to put up with your family. It's the other way around saying if you don't have an agreement, it works both ways.
(25:15):
Do you like your business partners current spouse? Do you know anything about their children and do you want to be in business with them?
Tara (25:23):
And buy sell deed? It's really helpful too, even if things, you don't have those issues and everyone agrees, yeah, we need to pay this family out of the business, but sorry, where's the money coming from? Especially when your income is most business owners, most of their income comes from the business, but suddenly you've lost one of your key people in the business that is probably going to have an impact on the profitability of the business and therefore their ability to obtain borrowings to pay you out. A lot of people don't have the cash sitting there to pay out their business partner. The insurance funding by sell deed is a way where we're not going to go into the mechanism of it, but it basically takes care of the payout.
(26:17):
And this is where the financial advisors shine and can add so much value to is this worth considering and what would that investment be for the business to have this peace of mind plan in place? Same with the key person insurance. So I would say if you are dealing with a client who has got other advisors like an accountant or a financial advisor in place, I would be cooperating with them and trying to come as a united front to just be like, okay, you've got to do something. It's not just a lawyer trying to get more fees and upsell you. So back to Lydia's, awesome question about what are some strategies to tackle this where this might be the very first time that your client is ever thinking that they need to do something separate to their will. So just to recap what we've talked about today, we've said ask open questions and get the client to start really thinking through themselves and having them to start appreciating the moral obligations that they have to their staff, their customers, their suppliers.
(27:29):
Number two, dive into those war stories and things that could go wrong and really start getting them thinking about the practical reality. Number three, diagrams the picture tells a thousand words. Let's just sort of show them what's covered by the will and your personal power of attorney, what is not, and those business assets are going to be outside of that realm, the flyers. So we love having, I think we spoke about this in our last episode, these beautifully written in plain English, breaking down these complex topics, these flyers that just summarise it so nicely so that a client, they might be nodding along while they're in the meeting with you, but then two weeks later when they're ready to make their decision or accept the quote, they're like, why do I need this? Again? I can't remember the detail. Those flyers are really helpful just to keep bringing them back up to speed. I've lost what number I'm up to, but five, I think we'll just say five. I've said rinse and repeat. I think it's a conversation you might have to have multiple times and maybe you just start planting the seeds when you're talking about the will and in the strategy meeting and then in the signing meeting do your pitch and then put the pressure on that they really need to do something a bit more if they want to sort that out and get the complete estate plan. Just hold off a little bit.
Carrie (28:58):
I think they could roll into a six point Tara too, like scoping, being careful with your scoping scope out just the pure estate planning, the pure will and power of attorney to begin with so that you can later add that on if they're not kind of sold or if they don't understand it to begin with because they'll just see will, they won't understand in your pricing control of succession of trust. Right?
Tara (29:23):
Yeah, I mean I think people listening, you'll do what feels authentic to you and probably for me, I would be thoughtful about, I don't want the client to feel like I've sprung this on them as an upsell at the end as a fee grab. But also as Carrie said, you may not have all the detail or it might just feel so overwhelming if you let go all guns blazing with here's the quote of all the single things you need to do straight away. I think just maybe everyone listening will probably work out what feels authentic to them in terms of how can you position that they could be more work involved down the track. So it's not a surprise, but you're not overwhelming them particularly some of this stuff. There's the must haves and then there's the nice to haves when it comes to business succession and the entity succession.
(30:17):
I think you can end up with quite a few. It would be nice to have, and I should recommend this to you, but it's not completely essential. You can sort of run into that realm as well. Like, okay, you've only got two shares on issue, but you've got three kids. So a share split. Does the share split have to be done now or can it be done after you die? Technically, it can be done after you die. That's a nice to have. It helps everyone if it's just done now, but it's not mandatory. So if you are pitching a share split at the same time as the will and the power of attorney, you kind of run the risk of freaking them out and just turning them off the whole process altogether. So I guess I just want to, that might be how you scope it is probably something that you just have to sit back and go, what feels authentic and good to me and my processes and how do I feel like I will position this properly with the client? Yeah.
Carrie (31:17):
Yeah. I think it can also depend on the client as well. I think you can get a little bit of a vibe from the client sometimes early on about what you think is going to work for them. Because if they come to you and say, it's just simple and we're really simple. If you think that the priority should be, actually I want to talk to 'em about testamentary trust to then throw all that extra stuff on top of them is going to just be like they're going to turn away. Whereas if you focus on the thing that you think they should be focusing mostly on, which was the testamentary trust, you can then always add into the conversation later once you've built up that trust and rapport with them.
Tara (31:50):
Yeah, beautifully said, Carrie. Okay. I think number seven, the last point I had was collaboration. If they do have other advisors, maybe not everyone has a financial advisor, but you would hope they have an accountant for their business. And so joining forces and coming at them as a united front with the joint recommendation, I think often the people trust their accountant a lot more than the lawyer that they've only known for a few months because that accountant has that ongoing support and ongoing relationship. So sometimes it might just need the accountant to be like, yeah, this is a really good idea, or I'm concerned that this is going to happen if you don't do this. Just to verify that you're not trying to just do a fee grab.
Carrie (32:39):
For with entities. Tara, I basically say I want to see the most recent financials for those entities because there can be things embedded in the financials for those entities that have massive impacts on the estate plan. I mean, let's talk about, for example, unpaid present entitlements. If the business is being run through a trust structure or there is a trust structure in the group, they might have these really great ideas about what they want to do with that trust structure, but the entire value of that trust structure can be ripped out into the estate if there's an unpaid present entitlement owing to that particular person. So the test data. So I think it's almost essential that if there's an accountant and there's a structure, you need to be talking with the accountant around what's in that trust, including any latent liabilities.
Tara (33:23):
Yeah, so let's talk resources. We have so many resources on this. Carrie, you just mentioned unpaid present entitlements, which is actually a real leakage risk for US lawyers because if there's an unpaid present entitlement from a family trust to the test data, then that will be dealt with under the will and it will shift equity from your column two into your column one. And so we need to be across all of that. We have a great training on if you're like unpaid, what we have a great training on what that is, how to look at balance sheets for trust, how to deal with loan accounts and unpaid precedent entitlements. We also have really schmick precedents for entity powers of attorney and family trust succession. So the precedents are very comprehensive. They come with extensive user notes and also 90 minute trainings on all the details of what happens and what is the interaction between the corporations act and the trust act and the whole thing.
(34:33):
So we've just talked super high level today. We do dive into the detail if this is, I know for instance, we get a lot of lawyers who their primary specialisation is family law, for example, and they do a bit of wills and might be looking to expand their succession practise. And so if you haven't really dived into the entity side of things, we set it all out for you super clearly and break down everything that you need to know to be able to guide the clients on this together with the practical resources. And the last thing I want to say, so if you are a law firm owner and a sole practitioner or a director, a sole director of a firm, then you need to have a power of attorney in place for your business. If you're in Queensland, I think, I can't remember which states, but some of your law societies mandated in Queensland, you have to have one in place.
(35:36):
Basically, LEXION and QLS have said, if you die, we will come in and triage your firm. We will get a lawyer in and we will audit all of your matters, work out where they're at. We'll get that lawyer in with suitable expertise and close out your matters, wrap up your billing, sort out your safe custody. We'll do it all, but we cannot do it if we do not have a power of attorney in place if there is not a person authorised to appoint us. So some states you can appoint your spouse, other states, I think New South Wales, you almost have to appoint another lawyer who has a principal practising certificate. But we need somebody authorised by your trading entity to appoint us into that role. Open the door of the office literally and from a corporation's point of view. So you need this entity power of attorney in place.
(36:38):
We have one for you, our precedent entity Power of attorney document. We wrote it for law firm owners to use. So it has the special powers and authorizations that your law societies want to see in there, but it also has options that you can just use with any business. So buy it for your firm, but then use it as a precedent resource for all of your clients as well. So I know the law societies are like, you need this entity power of attorney in place for your law firm, but then they're like, good luck drafting one. We identified that need. We were like, oh yeah, our TT precedents club members, most of them are sole practitioners. They all need it. And so we pooled out, put our heads together and created this resource for our TT precedents club members, and it's available for everybody to buy on the website.
Carrie (37:32):
And it is so easy to use. I want to reiterate that I've said it before. I'll say it again. It is so easy to use. You don't have to be an incredible estate planning lawyer to use it. It is that easy to use.
Tara (37:43):
Yeah. Thank you, Carrie. And I just want to share this little anecdote because I think it is in New South Wales. I probably got it wrong, but that's what my memory is telling me, where the person appointed as the attorney has to hold a principal practising certificate. So a lot of our New South Wales members of the TT Precedents Club have made a bloody system where they're like, if you do mine, I'll do yours and I'll be your person. If I get hit by the bus, you can step in and help triage it with the law society, and if you get hit by the bus, I'll be your person. And I just think that that just makes my heart glow because I know it's lonely when you are a sole practitioner and finding people that you trust enough to do that. And we say it's hard for our clients to get this stuff done for themselves and to make the hard decisions of who to appoint, and it's hard for us too. So I just love that the community we've built in the TT precedents club where people trust each other enough to be each other's buddy in the emergency plan.
Carrie (38:53):
That's the field good law story that we want to hear, Tara, right? We don't want to hear about lawyers behaving badly. We want to hear about them behaving cutely.
Tara (39:00):
So I just want to say thank you to Lydia for this question. It's an awesome one. And if anyone else has any more ideas or for topics that you want us to tackle in the podcast episodes coming up, do let us know. We may not get to it right away, but I promise we will add it into the programme and really think about it and we want to know what is going to be helpful to all of you. So as much feedback as possible, we really appreciate. So you can share that with us in the Art of Estate Planning Facebook group or reach out to us via email. But yeah, Carrie, any more notes before we wrap up this episode?
Carrie (39:44):
No, no, no notes. I think we've covered it all.
Tara (39:47):
Fabulous. Well, we are going to see you all next week. Thank you so much for tuning in.
