Process
The best estate plans start with good conversations
Our process gives us the time to understand you properly, give you advice, explain your options and help you make decisions that are right for you and the people you love.
You don't need to arrive knowing what documents you need or with all of your decisions already made. We will guide you through the process, one decision at a time.
By the end, we want you to understand not only what is in your estate plan, but why it's there.
1. Start with a Discovery Call
Your first step is a complimentary 20-minute Discovery Call with our Principal Lawyer, Lucy Percy.
We'll talk about why now feels like an important time to get your estate planning sorted, your family and circumstances, and anything in particular that you are concerned about or want to achieve.
And don't worry if you don't know what questions to ask. You don't need to know what you don't know. Lucy can tell you what other people in similar circumstances usually want to consider, and make sure you have the information you need to decide what happens next.
From there, Lucy will recommend the type of estate planning that is likely to be right for you, the lawyer in our team best placed to help you, and the likely cost.
If Head and Heart feels like the right fit for you, we'll then send you everything you need to get started.
2. Get ready for our First Meeting
Once you decide that we are a good fit for your needs, we'll send you an email asking for some more information to help us prepare for our First Meeting.
We'll ask about your family, your assets and how they are owned, your superannuation, any existing estate planning documents and anything else that will help us understand your circumstances.
You don't need to have every answer, and you certainly don't need to have made all of your estate planning decisions.
If you have a financial planner, we can typically ask them to help us gather much of the financial information we need, making the process even easier for you.
The information you give us beforehand means we can come to our First Meeting prepared. We can spend less of your valuable meeting time gathering facts, and more of it having the conversations where our estate planning expertise really matters.
3. Your First Meeting — making time for what matters
We allow up to 2 hours for couples and 1.5 hours for individuals for our First Meeting, so there is time to properly talk through your estate planning without feeling rushed.
You might see estate planning advertised as something you can get done in 20 minutes or tick off in your lunch break! But we're not sure finishing an estate planning meeting in record time is really the measure of success.
We've allowed these generous meeting times for years, and experience tells us they're about right. Occasionally we finish early, but more often than not there's another question worth asking, another scenario worth considering, or another way we can add value before we're finished.
We'll work through what matters to you, explain the things we think you need to consider, and talk through the different ways your estate plan could be structured.
There can be a lot of decisions to make when estate planning includes robust contingencies and genuine customisation. But our job isn't simply to ask you to choose between A or B.
The best estate planning advice often comes from identifying an option you didn't know was available, or asking a question you hadn't thought to ask, even when the answer means your estate plan no longer fits neatly within our precedents and templates.
Our systems are there to make the process easier and more efficient. They don't dictate the advice we give you or limit the estate plan we design.
We methodically work through each part of your estate plan: what should be dealt with in your Will and what should be kept outside it; your superannuation, your executors; guardians for your children; gifts you want to make; the control of any trusts; your attorneys and medical decision-makers; and even what should happen in the unlikely event that your first choices and contingencies all fail.
That might sound like a lot. But it doesn't feel like two hours of listening to a lawyer talk.
We have developed an extensive set of visual diagrams and graphics that we use throughout the meeting to help you see the decisions you're making, understand how the different pieces fit together and take in complex information more easily. We also use examples and real-life scenarios to show you how your choices could actually play out for the people you love.
We'll give you our recommendations and explain the alternatives, but the decisions are genuinely yours.
And you don't need to make every decision in that meeting. If something needs more thought, that's completely fine. We can start drafting with the decisions you have made and use placeholder clauses or people where appropriate, giving you time to consider the things that feel harder without holding up the whole process or stalling.
This is where much of the value of good estate planning happens. The strategy we develop with you in this meeting will shape your legal documents today, but its real value may be felt by the people you love many years from now.
4. We turn the strategy into the documents
After our First Meeting, we take everything we've discussed and carefully draft your estate planning documents.
Your documents will reflect the decisions we've made together, including the contingencies, protections and flexibility that matter for your circumstances.
Throughout your drafts, we'll also leave you guidance notes highlighted in yellow, drawing your attention to important clauses, explaining things we want you to particularly consider and that we will discuss in detail in the next meeting to help you finalise your choices.
After the First Meeting we will also send you a short, clear table asking for the details we need for the people you have chosen, things like addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses. We deliberately wait until this point to ask for those details, as we try to ask you for information only when we know we actually need it.
Where there were decisions you wanted more time to think about, that's okay too. You will see the placeholder clauses, and often seeing the options on the page helps you better understand the decision you're being asked to make and arrive at your final choice.
Once your drafts are ready, we'll send them to you before our next meeting. We don't expect you to understand every piece of legal drafting on your own, that's what our Document Review Meeting is for.
5. Document Review Meeting — we read every document with you
In this meeting, we will open each document and read through them together. We will explain them in plain English and show you how the drafting puts the strategy we discussed at our First Meeting into effect.
We'll take particular time with any yellow guidance notes and placeholder clauses, discuss your options, answer the questions that have come up, and help you finalise any decisions that were still open.
This meeting is also another opportunity to test the plan. Sometimes seeing everything in writing prompts a new question or makes you think differently about a decision you made, or person you chose, in our First Meeting.
That's exactly why we allow generous time for this meeting. The first draft isn't treated as the finished product, and your First Meeting isn't your one and only opportunity to consider your choices.
By the end of the meeting, we want you to feel confident that you understand your documents, that they reflect the choices you've made and, most importantly, that you're happy with the estate plan we've created together.
If reasonable changes are needed, we'll make them before anything is finalised or signed.
6. We finalise your documents and help you get them signed
After the Document Review Meeting, we'll make any final changes you've asked for and prepare your documents for signing.
Victoria
For our Victorian clients, there is usually no need for another meeting with us.
We'll print your final documents and post them to you in a carefully organised signing pack, with clear instructions about what needs to be signed, who can witness each document, examples of correctly completed documents, and everything else you need to get the signing right.
We'll also include a reply-paid envelope so that, once everything is signed, you can easily return your original documents to us if you would like us to store them safely for you.
If you would prefer to have a lawyer conduct the signing meeting, we can arrange that too. We can organise a lawyer close to you (if we are not able to do this ourselves) to conduct a dedicated Signing Meeting on our behalf. If you know from the outset that you would like this option, we can include it in the scope and fee we quote you; otherwise, it can be arranged later for an additional fee.
And of course, if you're unsure about anything while you're signing, you can call us and we can answer your signing concerns.
New South Wales
For our NSW clients, there is typically one additional meeting because the witnessing requirements are different.
We'll arrange a Signing Meeting with you to properly execute the documents in the presence of a lawyer. We can organise a lawyer close to you (if we are not able to do this ourselves) to conduct this meeting.
Your chosen Enduring Guardians also need to sign their acceptance of the appointment with an appropriate witness. We take care of organising this too, including posting them the particular page, meeting with them by video conference where appropriate, and then receiving the signed page back, so you're not left trying to coordinate these final steps yourself.
Once everything is complete, we'll make sure you have the copies you need and can safely store your original estate planning documents for you.
Your superannuation documents are taken care of too
We'll also send you your final Binding Death Benefit Nomination documents with clear instructions about how they need to be signed and witnessed.
Once signed, you can return them to us using the reply-paid envelope we provide. We can then send them to your superannuation fund on your behalf, so that this important part of your estate plan doesn't get left sitting on the kitchen bench waiting to be done.
Where appropriate, we'll also make sure you know what confirmation to expect from your financial planner, or super fund and what records should be kept with your estate planning documents.
Whichever State you're in, our job isn't finished when the drafting is finished. We see your estate plan through to the point where the documents are properly signed, the practical steps are taken and your estate plan is ready to work when you need it.
7. After signing — the final steps
When you work with a firm like Head and Heart Estate Planning, signing your documents isn't quite the end of our process. There are a few final steps we take to make sure your estate planning is properly completed, so that it can be easily picked up, and used if the time ever comes.
We'll provide you with copies of your completed estate planning documents and, if you choose to leave your originals with us, we'll store them safely for you.
Where appropriate, we'll send letters to your Attorneys, Guardians or Medical Treatment Decision Makers, with information about their role and what they may need to know if the time ever comes for them to act, how to contact us, and what to do if our firm ever closes or can’t be found.
If you have other professional advisers involved in your planning, such as your financial planner or accountant, we can also work with them to make sure the relevant parts of your estate plan are understood and implemented.
And we'll make sure you know what you need to do next, if anything at all.
Your estate plan isn't something you should have to think about constantly, but it does need to change when your life does (or sometimes the law does).
We'll provide you with an Annual Estate Planning Checklist so you can easily keep an eye on whether anything has changed that might mean your estate plan needs another look.
We've also created a dedicated Existing Clients section of our website, where you can complete our Annual Estate Planning Checklist, book a review of your existing estate plan if you already know you need to make some changes.
Our aim is to leave you not just with signed documents, but with your estate planning properly protecting you and your loved ones, and an easy way to keep it that way.