Oh. I'm just waiting for the timer to start Jim. It is like nine Fridays to Christmas. And following on from my podcast last week with the amazing Ash from Yellow Falcon, the link is in the show notes, I want to discuss the estate planning side that Ash and I had touched on. And I've spoken about this before, you know, throughout the legal practice that I had which I've now sold and then I got cancer. So I am slowly trying to get back in to the swing of things. And by no means do you have to use me as your lawyer. But coming up to Christmas, I really want to emphasize the importance of estate planning. And today I'm going to go through just some of the stories that I have. from clients who have had things prepared and not had things prepared and i'm doing my absolute best to not have notes for this i literally have no notes so hopefully my chemo brain is not too bad today But what I want to start off by saying, I've been a lawyer for over sixteen years. I've been practicing in the legal. I've been working in legal for around twenty years. I had my first legal practice for ten years, which I sold just when I was diagnosed with cancer at the end of last year. And I had another legal practice, which I've had for the past five years. So I had two at the same time. I have a mortgage-broking business as well. I do the things. And having just been diagnosed with cancer and now I'm coming out the other side of it, I know so many clients in the past who have been diagnosed with cancer or something terminal and either had their estate planning and they had to update it or they didn't have any estate planning or going last minute to hospitals and literally deathbeds to try and get things finalized is not fun for anyone. So I want to go through what the important documents you should have if you are over the age of eighteen, regardless of whether you have assets or not. I really think that you should be having these documents. Your will can be super simple. That is fine. But what happens when you don't have these documents can be an absolute nightmare and we don't need to give your family members any additional grief than what they already have. So first of all, the will is a document that comes into play once you pass away. I'm giving really brief terms here. There's obviously nuances with these documents, but this is like the gist. So the will is the document that comes into play when you pass away. It is for your executors to administer your estate as per your wishes. Now, let's not go into the legalities of that. That is essentially what it is. The other document that you should have is called a power of attorney. State by state, these names change a little bit. So I'm predominantly using New South Wales terminology here. But a power of attorney, enduring power of attorney is a document that I describe as the business end of your life. So you appoint an attorney and they can we can register it and they can sell property on your behalf, access your bank accounts, pay bills. What's really important about this document is if say you own property with somebody, so it might be a spouse, friend, family member, what have you, and something happens to you or the other owner of that house, people automatically think that they have a right to do whatever because they own it, but they don't. So the power of attorney document will allow you to be able to sell property on behalf of somebody if you need to. And I'll get into that. There's some stories with that in a moment. The enduring guardianship is what we call the health document. So you appoint an enduring guardian and they make health decisions for you. So whether you need medical or dental treatment, whether you need any operations, kind of like meals and wheels, that type of document. All three documents are equally as important. No document is more important than another. Some people think they only need a will and not the other two documents. You really do need all three at a bare minimum. Then you have like advanced care directives and other things like that as well. A lot of the time palliative care goes into those type of documents. But I'm not going to be discussing that one today. I'm just going to be discussing the three. So... most of you would know that i was diagnosed with cancer and it's been twelve months since the wheel started unknowingly falling off i thought i you know had diabetes the doctors were trying to tell me sorry i thought i had a uti the doctors were trying to tell me that i had diabetes which i knew i didn't because i knew what my blood sugar was but ultimately i was diagnosed with stage one then it went to stage two then i went to stage three cancer Had I not had my estate planning sorted, I can't tell you, I can't emphasize this enough, the last thing that would have been on my mind was to get my estate planning sorted. Thankfully, my estate planning already was sorted because I practice what I preach. sometimes, most of the time. But I know that having been so heavy in treatment, if I did not have those documents, the last thing I would have been wanting to do was trying to sort those documents. So please don't wait for a diagnosis. Please don't wait until you're about to go on holiday. Please don't wait until you think you need to have more assets. Please get them done. If you're over the age of So some horror stories with wills. Now, my brain is not as good as what it was. It is still a little bit foggy. But one that comes to mind, well, there's a few. So... One was a young couple that I had that had just brought their first home together. They had a little child as well. We discussed estate planning and insurances. They got the house done. They did their estate planning done. Yay. We discussed how important insurance was as well. And then we were like, yep, yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Unfortunately, not long after we had settled on their first property and did their estate planning, he was a fisherman. He was out on some rocks and he got swept away and he passed away. I just had a newborn child. um she automatically assumed that she was going to keep the house and the estate planning side of that was sort of this isn't this is story that insurance more than state planning side um but because they didn't get the insurance out he's super they're only young so he didn't really have much super there was like i think a fifty thousand dollar policy attached to his super there was nowhere near the amount of money that was needed for her to be able to retain that house So yes, under the will and under laws of intestacy, because they were joint tenants, she was entitled to the house, but they did not have the money for her to be able to stay in the house because they didn't get those insurance policies sorted. Ultimately, the property had to be sold at a loss. And then I think she ended up moving back in with her parents. So, yes, they did the things, but they didn't get the insurance policies. So insurance is just as important. You can get it on your own. You can use a financial advisor. Some insurances can be paid from your super. Some insurance you have to pay for yourself. I'm entitled to insurance now with the cancer diagnosis. You have income protection. You have those things now. So the moral of this story is that insurance policies are just as important as having those documents. So they did so well in getting like their first home, had their newborn baby, did their estate planning, but they didn't do their insurances and ultimately they lost the property because she wasn't working and she couldn't service the loan on her own. Another one is a power of attorney and enduring guardian document. So having the story that I mentioned before that people think all they need is a will, this client had her will done and she was about to go into actually no she wasn't going to go into nursing home i apologize um they're trying to keep her out of the nursing home and take care of her her husband was still alive and she was at home taking the husband was taking care of her and the clients had contacted us to get the estate planning sorted i'll get to the husband in a moment i'm just going to speak about the wife at the moment so anyway the wife had a will did not have the other two documents didn't have the power of attorney didn't have the enduring guardianship um she had dementia and she had dementia dementia there was no ounce of capacity in her at all so we were unable to do the power of attorney and the enduring guardian for her um without having to apply to the tribunal so the family had elected at the time to not worry about that the dad was okay he was reasonably healthy for someone of his age And they weren't going to worry anything about it. I did the estate planning for the husband. So he didn't have any of those documents. I'm not quite sure why she had one and he didn't. But anyway, so I did the estate planning for the husband. I did a will, prior returning, during guardian. Everything was all signed properly. um the father happened to have passed away i can't remember the time frame between doing the documents and him passing but he passed away so this is where the shoot started hitting the fan um The mum then had to go into a nursing home, but the family at the time elected to not have been to apply to the tribunal for a guardianship or power of attorney or the equivalent of. I'm just going to use the same terminology to not be confusing. She ended up going into a nursing home. The nursing home asks for those three documents. She only had the will. um first of all there were issues with the medication the nursing home and doctor and hospital i think from memory refused to amend her her medication without the enduring guardianship so there was a whole thing in relation to that side her current medicine was making her very very unwell so there was that stress that ended up getting sorted but that didn't have to happen Then the power of attorney, we then had to apply to the guardianship tribunal and it was an urgent application and it still took months and that experience was horrible for them as well. But they had access, no access to her bank accounts. Her accounts was going in arrears. They had to pay for the nursing home. It was messy. She was at the verge of getting kicked out of the nursing home. It was really, really yucky. So had we have had those documents, that process would have been a lot smoother. So the guardianship ended up awarding the equivalent of the power of an attorney. The enduring guardian side, they would not approve. they wouldn't do but um by having the tribunal decide her power of attorney meant that there were costs for decisions to be made. The person who was appointed had to be audited once a year and justify why expenses were there. She was on the verge of getting kicked out of the nursing home. So it was really, really messy. But if she had those documents, it would have been so much easier. But because she had dementia, we couldn't do the other two documents. So we'll... still ended up being fine but the husband comes back in to this well I received a phone call from the daughter of the deceased saying my dad's just passed away I understand you have the will I knew exactly who he was I didn't know who she was turns out that he had had a child from an affair that they did not tell me about because they didn't think it was relevant to tell me So he had these documents, but they didn't tell me all the circumstances about this other daughter. And that then resulted in a family provision claim. So he had the documents, but they didn't tell me about the daughter. um that so they just lost the the dad they had all the issues with the mum and then this daughter who I they didn't tell me about my instructions were very clear they didn't think that they needed to tell me about her because they thought that she just she wasn't going to do anything basically which didn't end up that way so the moral of this story and it's changed how i even word my questions when i take estate planning now um is that yes they had well the mum didn't have the documents but the dad had the documents but i wasn't properly instructed by this daughter that i knew nothing about um you know even you ask the questions like okay so who are the the siblings you know who are your children writing all the names down she was not mentioned a part of that so you can have the document and have things still go wrong so please make sure so the moral of the story is please make sure you have your documents before something happens like dementia or you're you're in a coma or you have a stroke and you don't have that capacity. And second of all, please make sure that you answer the lawyer honestly. And if there are anything, you know, any skeletons in the closet like children that, you know, we don't know about, We need to know about that to be able to adequately advise you on your estate planning and, you know, put whatever in place for that. So that was a pretty messy one, not to mention the stuff with the tribunal. The tribunal made the wife go down to Newcastle. She sawed herself. She was vomiting all the way down. They had to clean her up when they got there and it was the same experience coming home. So it was really, really an awful probably twelve-months for this family. So please don't assume somebody's going to outlive somebody else. Please don't assume you're always going to have time to do these documents because things happen and you may not have that opportunity. The podcast I did last week with Ash, as I said, the link will be in the show notes, she was age, sorry, she was pregnant with triplets. Her husband went out for his normal run and he was hit by a car and died at the scene and didn't come home. and I think they had their estate planning sorted we actually didn't get to that I'm going to assume that they did uh based on the the podcast episode but you know he was twenty nine years old you know or young and he went out for his dog and he did not return home so those things happen as as well like you just don't know what is going to to happen and Some people don't like having the conversation. I can assure you having the conversation is going to be much easier than your family having to work out when you pass away what to do. And Ash said it beautifully where it's coming from love. It's not coming from arrogance or it's not coming from someone trying to be difficult. It's coming from love. And I think the biggest gift that you can give someone your family is knowing what to do in that situation where you want your things to go if there are any special items you want to give somebody like family heirlooms um you know and then going so far is whether you want to be very committed whether you want to be a donor where do you want to be buried or cremated do you want a church service do you not want a church service do you want to be buried in something in particular do you want on a certain day like whatever it is the conversation that you can have will just save so much additional unneeded stress and grief when that time comes. And coming up to Christmas, your days getting your estate clean are going to be limited because legal practices close for usually two, three, sometimes close for four weeks over the Christmas break. A lot of people are travelling over the Christmas break. Things happen in the Christmas break. Diagnosis happens. I started my treatment for cancer the week of Christmas. If I didn't have that in place and if I was kind of heading towards terminal, which thankfully I wasn't, there was probably no way I was going to get my estate planning sorted in that time frame. One, I was smashed very hard with treatments. I wouldn't have been up to it. But two, legal practices would have been shut over that Christmas period. So it just, it wasn't going to work out. I know we have people contact us a week of Christmas. So the week that we're closing, wanting to get their estate planning sorted and they called the Christmas before and the Christmas before that as well. So like two or three Christmases, they're calling us a week of Christmas to get their estate planning sorted and they don't. And then they call next Christmas. Like it's like Christmas is their prompt. And doesn't matter how much we advise them saying, you know, let's do it in the new year. It doesn't happen at each year at Christmas. They just keep calling with wanting it done. And we can't assist because we're closed. So there are probably more stories that I have. Ash's story she shares in her podcast, as I said, I'll link that below. She lost three people, one of those including her husband, within a timeframe of twelve months. So, you know, what she does now to help people on the other side of that is absolutely beautiful as well. But I wanted to just put my legal hat on to let you know you are starting to run out. time to get this sorted. As of filming this today, you've got about nine weeks, nine Fridays left. So you really probably have seven or eight Fridays left or weeks to get your estate planning sorted beside this side of Christmas. So if you have a question about estate planning, please let me know. Please make sure you share this episode as well. I know there are more people in Australia that do not have their estate planning sorted than have it sorted. which is very scary together with the insurance. I can't tell you how important insurance is, having now been entitled to the insurance that I prepared for before I had my kids. That is also equally as important. I'm not a financial advisor, so I can't advise you on that, but insurance is a conversation that you need to have as well. So don't want to put a damper on Christmas. I'm trying to do it before Christmas so you have enough time to get it sorted. But please put the estate planning on your priority list because it really is important. If you have documents that need to be updated, if you've been married, divorced, That all needs to happen as well. There's no time frame. Your will from ten years ago might still be valid, but it might be a really good time to have a look at it to make sure that the people and your wishes are still what you want them to be. Yeah, that is it. Please, please, please, if you're over the age of eighteen, look at getting your estate planning sorted before Christmas. And, yep, I will catch you next episode. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. And stay safe. All right. Bye. Thanks, Jim.
