Pharmacist Perri McCarthy first met her Perpetual Estate Planning Lawyer at a café. After chatting over lunch for an hour or two, Perri walked away with a drafted will and a sense of comfort having met someone she felt she could trust.
For many, the very thought of discussing their will is daunting because it involves facing their own mortality. For others, like Perri, putting a plan in place is on their ‘to do list’, but the pressures of a busy life get in the way.
“I was relieved I was finally doing something about it. It was something I wanted to do for a while but I just kept putting it on the back burner. When you are busy in your day to day life, you don’t get on to doing these sorts of things.” - Perri
Over the last few years Perri has experienced big changes in her life, having divorced, remarried and grown her business to a point where she is running five pharmacies in Melbourne. While Perri did have a will in place, it was outdated, which meant the new businesses Perri had worked so hard to build were at risk of not being passed on to her loved ones.
At Perpetual we believe focusing your energy on something you care passionately about is at the heart of an estate planning conversation. It might be their family, it might be their businesses, such as Perri’s case, or it might be philanthropy and the charities they support. What we aim to achieve in the first meeting is to identify what clients really do love and flesh that out to develop an estate planning solution to protect it.
Perri is comfortable her revised will accurately reflects her current situation and protects her family and business interests. But the only constant in life is change and Perri plans to have a few more coffees with Perpetual in the future.
“I think over the next few years I’d like to focus on making those businesses the best they can be, focus on my children and getting them through school and into adult life. And then hopefully at some point scaling down again and perhaps just running one or two businesses really well. But for now I’m looking forward to continuing to work and I will continue to review my estate plan as I move forward.”