The world has changed. The signs are all around. Technology has changed. Medicine has changed. Yet, estate planning is performed essentially the same way it has been performed for the last century and more - and that’s why traditional estate planning is dead.

Here’s the problem: traditional estate planning is Death Focused; Advisor Driven; Money Only; Solutions in Search of a Problem; Complicated; Confusing; and Client Dependent.

The first problem is that traditional estate planning is all about dying. That was fine when the average life expectancy was half of what it is today. The average life expectancy for someone born in 1850 was only 40 years old. Today, it is twice that at age 80. That problem has mushroomed in the last 17 years. Life expectancy for an average 65 year old increased by more than 50 percent from 1990 to 2002, adding six more years of lifestyle that your capital needs to fund. What will happen to life expectancy over the next 15 years?

Think about this for a minute. How many Americans with assets of $1 million to $10 million are concerned about running out of money? In a recent study, more than nine out of ten were "very concerned" about running out of money! And yet, traditional estate planning does not address this critical issue - living too long.

Traditional estate planning is advisor-driven. In other words, the advisor is in the driver seat, not you.

Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church and author of , made publishing history after his book simultaneously hit number one on all four major bestseller lists, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Publishers Weekly. The Purpose Driven Life has been on The New York Times list for a record 114 weeks. Following its publication in 2002, it would become the best-selling book for 2003 and 2004, and the best-selling nonfiction hardback in history, with sales of more than 22 million copies.

Purpose driven planning. That makes sense doesn’t it? Planning should be driven by your purposes - your passions, your vision and your values. The most important estate planning document should be your Family Mission Statement. It should drive all planning and decision making.

Traditional estate planning is all about the money. True wealth is more than money. True wealth has three dimensions. It has a financial, personal and social dimension. Traditional estate planning deals only with the transfer of your money. Think about the five most significant events in your life. How many involve money?

Traditional estate planning is hampered by the "Hammer Problem." The Russians have a proverb about someone who has a hammer. To them, everything is a nail. The estate planning industry teaches advisors how to use specific tools and to look for people who need those tools. Boiler-plate solutions in search of a problem. It is "Dear Occupant Planning." You’ve received those mailings, haven’t you? Dear Occupant, We know you well.

Traditional estate planning is complicated. Life is complicated enough. No one wants more complication. Today’s time-stretched, information overloaded world screams for simplicity - not simplistic, simplicity. Make things elegantly simple. Wealth planning is complex. There is no doubt about that, but so is every field. The misconception is that things that are complex need to be complicated. They don’t.

Take the computer as an example of an industry that figured this out. Back when the computer was both complex and complicated, who used it? Techies, right? When Apple, and then Microsoft, figured out how to make the complex simple through user-friendly graphical interface, computer usage skyrocketed. There is a lesson in that for the planning industry.

Traditional estate planning is confusing, due in large part to the fact that traditional estate planning advisors speak in a foreign language. Just talk to one or read an estate planning document. If you don’t know the language, you are an outsider.

Before , information was in the hands of a relatively few and kept from the average person. and his invention, the printing press, changed all that. By the end of the 1400s, more than one thousand printers had printed between eight and ten million copies of more than forty thousand book titles. Printing stimulated the literacy of lay people and eventually came to have a deep and lasting impact on their private lives.

Traditional estate planning is Client Dependent. The onus is on you. You are the one most often responsible to do most of the work. Complete this. Change that.

Let’s be honest. Nobody likes estate planning. We want something different. Let’s reengineer the estate planning process and make it what you want it to be. Wouldn’t the new process be one that:

Focuses on - Living, not dying; Harmony, not division; People, not just money.

Gives you - Peace of mind, not a constant nagging; Certainty, not ambiguity; Simplicity, not complexity.

Is - Energizing, not draining; Time Saving, not time consuming; Enjoyable, not drudgery.

Provides you - More Control, not less; Flexibility, not rigidity; Accessibility, not unavailability.

Allows you to - Be Proactive, not reactive; Receive Value, not just spend money; Stay Up-to-Date Automatically, not constantly feel out-of-date.

Would be - Custom, not boiler plate; Plain English, not a foreign language; a System, not just a pile of documents.

Wonder if this new generation of planning was all that and more? Wonder if it allowed you to create a Game Plan to live the kind of life you’ve always dreamed of? Wonder if this new generation of planning allowed you to live your legacy as well as leave one? Wouldn’t you want to engage in that type of planning?

Why isn’t it happening more? Virtually the entire body of training teaches traditional estate planning, so advisors are reluctant to change. It requires a significant investment of time and money. Change requires a new mind set, a new skill set, a new tool set, and a new support set. Remember, why switch to Windows when all your training and experience has been in DOS?

According to TNS, one of the nation’s largest information sources on wealth, the number of millionaire households reached a record 9.3 million in 2006. That’s a 55 percent growth over the number of households in 2001. It’s time for some of those 9.3 million to demand this new generation of planning and find an advisor that can provide it.

If you are waiting for estate planning to do what Lazarus did, to rise from the dead, you will be waiting a long time. The brilliant Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing we’ve always done and expecting different results. Maybe it’s time for you to demand different results, because traditional estate planning is dead - and it’s not coming back!