How Advisers Can Start the Estate Planning Conversation

For many advisers, estate planning feels like a conversation best left to lawyers. Yet the most successful advisory practices treat it as part of holistic wealth management because clients trust their adviser to help protect not just their money, but their family outcomes.

 Still, starting that conversation can be uncomfortable. It involves personal topics, ageing, relationships, family conflicts, and death. But handled well, it builds lasting trust and differentiates your practice from purely transactional advice.

Here are a few ways advisers are making it part of client discussions and conversation:

1. Use life events as openers. Buying a home, welcoming a new child, or starting a business naturally raises questions about asset ownership and protection. Framing estate planning as future-proofing a client’s hard work makes the conversation more positive and proactive.

2. Keep it practical, not legalistic. Clients do not need to know legal terms. Focus instead on outcomes: who will make decisions, who benefits, and how to avoid unnecessary complexity and tax later.

3. Position yourself as a facilitator, not a drafter. You do not need to write Wills, you need to guide the process. Clients appreciate when their adviser coordinates with lawyers and ensures the plan fits their overall strategy.

4. Share examples, not templates. Stories of blended families, business partners, or ageing parents spark curiosity. It helps clients see estate planning as relevant, not theoretical. The Inherit platform offers a curated collection of articles and documents that you can share with your clients.

5. Make it visual. When clients can see their family structure, assets, and intended distributions mapped out, the discussion becomes clearer and more engaging.

At Inherit, we see estate planning as part of the adviser’s domain. Yes, lawyers bring the legal structure, experience, and problem-solving required to complete the documents. But advisers are already skilled at looking forward, identifying gaps, and understanding the bigger picture of a client’s affairs. Most importantly, advisers hold a long-standing trust relationship with the client, while lawyers are often engaged for specific transactions.

Our co-founder Chris Hill has just returned from the UK, where conversations with lawyers and advisers revealed that most UK advisers now handle estate planning and wealth transfer as part of their core business. We believe there are several reasons for this. The higher superannuation guarantee in Australia provides a strong foundation for advice, particularly in the SMSF space, and competition may be more intense in the UK. Another factor could be that the UK market is simply more mature, and this trend is now making its way to Australia.

When advisers and lawyers work together, the client wins. Estate planning becomes not just a legal process but a guided experience led by the adviser, completed by the lawyer, and strengthened through collaboration.

At Inherit Australia, we help advisers bring estate planning into everyday advice conversations without taking on the legal risk.