Best Practice For Storing Long Text Fields

As we all know, there is a 8060 bytes size limit on SQL Server rows. I
have a table which requires a number of text fields (5 or 6). Each of
these text fields should support a max of 4000 characters. We currently
store the data in varchar columns, which worked fine untill our
appetite for text fields increased to the current requirement of 5, 6
fields of 4000 characters size. I am given to review a design, which
esentially suggests moving the text columns to a separate TextFields
table. The TextFields table will have two columns - a unique reference
and a VARCHAR (4000) column, thus allowing us to crossreference with
the original record. My first impresion is that I'd rather use the SQL
Server 'text' DB type instead, which would allow me the same
functionality with much less effort and possibly better performance.
Can anyone advise on advantages and disadvantages of the two options
and what the best practice in this case would be.
Any advise will be well appreciated.
Tzanko