Estate Planning Standards

 

Estate Planning portal for Accountants, Lawyers & Advisers: Build legal documents online

Welcome to Legal Consolidated’s Estate Planning Standard Policy. Building this document provides you with a completed Best Practice Policy, to protect the Accountant, Adviser, Licensee and Lawyer.

There is an obligation by accountants and advisers to initiate, explain and support the needs of a client:

• Estate Planning
• Tax-effective Wills
• Medical/Lifestyle Powers of Attorney, Guardianships and Appointing Medical Treatment Decision Maker
• Enduring Powers of Attorney
• Contractual Will Agreements – for second marriages
• Loans to Children – to escape bankruptcy and the family court
• Deed of Gift
• Forgive a Debt Agreement
• Changing control of a Family Trust at death

Financial planners and accountants hold close, ongoing relationships with their clients. A natural extension of this relationship is discussing estate planning. While a lawyer may see a client for a few hours, an adviser and accountant hold a long term fiduciary relationship with their clients. They have unparalleled knowledge of the client’s family circumstances and affairs. 

Often the client, even after many years of requests, still ‘can’t find the time’ to see a taxation lawyer to attend to their Estate Planning. Even then, what can a lawyer learn in a few hours versus the continual ongoing relationship with the accountant and financial planner?

The best solution is for you to remain the centre of the universe for your clients. You build the estate planning documents on our law firm’s website, and we retain full legal responsibility for them.

Your completed Estate Planning Best Practice Policy includes:

Estate Planning law experts: Our Law Firm’s credentials

I am an Adjunct Professor lecturing both the Estate Planning and Superannuation units at a number of universities around Australia. I have done so since 1999.

Of my seven degrees, four of them are in law including my doctorate. My research was in Estate Planning and succession planning.

I author the two Australian leading textbooks on Estate Planning: CCH Australian Estate Planning and Thompson Reuters’ Australian Financial Planning Handbook.

Our tax-effective Wills include the following protective trusts:

• 3-Generation Testamentary Trusts – reduces the four death duties: CGT, Stamp duty, foreigner and income tax for 3 generations
• Superannuation Testamentary Trust – reduces the 17% and 32% tax on Superannuation going to adult children
• Bankruptcy Trusts – if a beneficiary is bankrupt
• Divorce Protection Trust – if a child separates
• Maintenance Trust – where beneficiaries under 18 years of age or unstable

Best Practice in building Estate Planning documents

Build these two documents. They provide you with best practice in building legal documents on our website.

The role of Accountants and Advisers in Estate Planning & Wills

I had a call from an adviser in Sydney. His client died. His children telephoned the adviser. They claim that Dad’s estate is worth $2.5m. However, the death tax is $800,000. 

I found that hard to believe.

The adviser informs me that the only asset of the dead father’s estate is $2.5m from life insurance in the Superannuation fund. Since the children are over 18, a 32% non-dependency tax applies. 

I asked why there is no Superannuation Testamentary Trust in the Will. This reduces the non-dependency tax on the super. I telephoned the lawyer who prepared the Will. He is a well-respected family lawyer whom I know. To protect him, I call him Robert. This is how the call goes:

Brett: Robert, how come you did not put a Superannuation Testamentary Trust in his Will?

Robert: Brett, as you know, I only practice in family law.  I was not aware that there is a tax on superannuation at death. I did put a note in the cover letter warning that I do not do tax. In the future, when I prepare another Will, which is not often, I will add a note to confirm that I do not provide advice on superannuation as well.

Brett: But Robert, did you speak with the client’s accountant and financial planner?

Robert: I did not see much need to do so. I am the lawyer, not them.

This is why you must be the centre of the estate planning universe.

You assemble the team and source the best risk adviser, family lawyer, tax lawyer, conveyancer, sharebroker, valuer, actuary, and finance broker.

Estate Planning is best controlled by the accountant and the financial planner. They know the client. They are the best professionals to serve as project managers for the estate planning process.

As the accountant and financial planner, you are the centre of the universe. You bring the team together and manage the estate planning process.

Build the Estate Planning Quality Assurance Manual. The Manual authorises you to build Estate Planning documents on our website, throughout Australia, including the:

• 3-Generation Testamentary Trust Will
• Enduring and Medical/Lifestyle POAs

We look forward to helping you grow your Estate Planning practice.

Generate New Revenue: Estate Planning for Accounting and Advisory Firms

Estate Planning

Estate planning is far more than a lawyer drafting Wills and POAs; it is a holistic process best managed by a trusted accountant or financial planner.

By building these documents on our law firm’s website, you are entitled to charge your normal advisory fees for managing the estate planning file.

As a leading Australian law firm providing legal documents online, every document you build includes a cover letter confirming Legal Consolidated authored the work. Because of this, your clients directly benefit from:

• Law firm Professional Indemnity Insurance
• Legal Professional Privilege
• Free legal advice from our lawyers as you build the documents
• Document samples with explanatory notes
• Free updates of the Wills and POAs.
• Free advice before and after mental incapacity and death.

With built-in hints and training videos to guide you, you keep complete control of the client relationship while we protect them legally.

Zero Legal Risk: Our Law Firm assumes full liability for Wills and POAs

• Legal Consolidated is responsible for the documents.
• Your client becomes our client.
• There is a direct client relationship between us and your client.
• Every document has a letter confirming that we authored the document, built on our website.

Are Accountants giving legal advice when Building Wills on a Law Firm’s website?

Legal Consolidated’s website enables accountants, lawyers and financial advisors to build legal documents for their clients. Documents include Trust Deeds, Self-Managed Super Deeds, Companies and 3-Generation Testamentary Trust Wills.

On our website, you deal directly with a law firm. Therefore, you get:

a. Legal Professional Privilege

b. legal advice and help to answer online questions – telephone, email or chat with us

c. letter confirming that Legal Consolidated Barristers & Solicitors authored and is responsible for the document

d. the law firm is responsible for the legal document including:

• • • • the questions, hints and training videos
      • dynamic logic flows – the next question changes depending on the previous answer
      • the answers you type in (e.g. if the accountant or adviser incorrectly misspells the client’s name, we are responsible)
      • legal documents, minutes and a cover letter
      • the signing of the documents

You are not giving legal advice when you build documents on Legal Consolidated’s website.

You are a  ‘mere scribe’.  See:

• Attorney-General v Quill Wills Ltd (1990) 3 WAR 500
• Legal Practice Board v Computer Accounting and Tax Pty Ltd [2007] WASC 184
• Cornall v Nagle [1995] 2 VR 188 at 210
• Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (Cth)
• Sinclair v C of T [2010] AATA 902
• Andre Agassi v Robinson & Bar Council & Law Society [2005] EWCA 1507

The Tax Institute’s Estate & Business Succession Planning, 7th edition, states on page 9:

‘Work that is undertaken in association with the law or legal practice will not necessarily constitute engaging in legal practice. Examples include:

• clerical or administration tasks
• selling legal documents; and
• advising of incidental legal requirements by a person in the pursuit of an occupation other than law, eg tax agents advising on the requirements of tax legislation.’

What about a financial planner’s Dealer Group?

The Australian Financial Licensee (AFS) provides a list of ‘financial products’ that financial advisers offer their clients. Legal services, such as those provided by our law firm, are not investment products. They are legal documents.

Your practice can build legal documents online for clients. Each document is accompanied by our letter, confirming that we authored it.

Some dealer groups and accounting houses require that a lawyer speak to your client. Just tick the box as you build the document, if you want this service. A lawyer contacts your client directly regarding the document.

Build your own Estate Planning Standard Policy for your practice.

How to Invoice Clients for Estate Planning Services

Q: We have just completed our first Estate Planning bundle for our client.

I am grateful that Legal Consolidated Barristers & Solicitors provides a written letter on its letterhead. The letter is addressed directly to the client. It confirms that Legal Consolidated is the sole author, owner and is responsible for the legal document.

Your online building process for Estate Planning allows me to generate a new revenue stream from work that I am essentially already doing. Your website gives me the confidence to advise on the benefits of estate planning. It is a complete service model for my practice.

We are about to invoice the client for our time as a scribe. This is for typing in the answers to the questions.

What wording do you consider appropriate for our invoice for being a scribe?

A: I do not think you look at it from the correct perspective. On the back of many accountants’ and financial planners’ business cards, you see a list of services. One of them is often ‘Estate Planning’.

Estate Planning is much more than a Will and POAs. A Will and POAs are, with respect, only a minor part of a lifetime Estate Planning process that accountants and advisers embark upon for each of their clients. For example, is it not the adviser’s job to 1. create wealth, 2. preserve wealth and 3. transfer wealth at the correct time, such as divorce, death and succession planning?

Further, many aspects of Estate Planning are the sole province of the financial planner. This includes Reversionary Pensions, superannuation and the like. Similarly, only accountants can advise on the taxation implications and preparations.

I would have thought that on your Tax Invoice, you would put “Estate Planning $6,500” or whatever fee you charge as a financial planner or accountant. And then add incidental costs such as the costs of the insurance broker, finance broker fees, estate planning lawyer fees, valuers fees and the like.

Can the adviser’s client pay for the documents with their own credit card?

Yes, regardless of whose account it is in, any credit card can be used to pay for the document, and that credit card can be different each time.

So the client can pay directly with their credit card.

This is true even though the account is in the name of an accounting practice, financial planning firm, or law firm.