Your Letter of Wishes
When you prepare an Estate Plan it is very important that you also prepare a Letter of Wishes. What is that? It is a document where you put all of the non binding information. Why would you want non binding information in relation to an Estate, don’t you want it to all be binding? No, for a few reasons.
You have documents for binding wishes, they are your Will, your Power of Attorney, your Appointment of Enduring Guardian and your Advance Care Directive.
Not all information is binding, because not all information is a rule or regulation. Letting people know where you keep your spare key, what your bank account number is, or whether you currently have income protection insurance is important, but this is not a rule or a regulation it is merely information.
Other things that you want to say may change over time, for instance your preference for medical care today may change in ten years because there is a new technology available. You don’t want your medical decision maker stuck with binding but outdated directions.
Do I need a lawyer to do a Letter of Wishes?
In a word, no. In fact you can buy death books or precedents for a Letter of Wishes online fairly easily. Because the information is not binding (or should not be binding) the risk of unintentional consequences is not the same. Because a Will is binding, and the words are read in a black and white literal context, the risk of doing a DIY Will is entirely different to preparing your own Letter of Wishes.
The thing is this document should form part of comprehensive Estate Plan. When you appoint an Executor you know that they are responsible for your funeral, so you should give them some guidance about that funeral. Most arguments around funerals are arguments about what the deceased person would have wanted, in Australia we are not a culture that keeps important information in aural records we write things down. You should write down what you want for your funeral so that no one needs to argue about what you wanted, and so that you reduce the decisions that your Executor has to deal with immediately after your death.
Do you help people with their Letter of Wishes?
So part of what I am talking about when I say I don’t do simple Wills is all of this information around death. I don’t do simple Wills because Death is not a simple thing, and so in an effort to help your family to deal with your death I want you to leave as much information for them as possible. I also realise that proper Estate Planning is overwhelming, so I am not simply going to give you the document and expect you to complete it on your own. We will have follow up appointments to deal with this.
I think I need a new Estate Plan
If you think you need a new Estate Plan then, quite frankly, you probably do. If you are ready to get started with that then you could have a look at my prices on the Services page and book in if you are still interested (I don’t pretend to be the cheapest).
