Interesting Facts about Wills

Interesting Facts about Wills

• Most Australians have a will or expect to make one. While most younger people do not have a will, almost 60% of adult Australians have made a will and 93% of people over 70 years of age have a will. The likelihood of making a will increased with age and the amount of assets. (Cheryl Tilse et al, ‘Having the Last Word? Will Making and Contestation in Australia’ (University of Queensland, 2015).
• About 64% of Australians with minor children do not have a Will.
• The need to make changes to a will over a lifetime is a significant issue that is not always addressed. In the prevalence survey, 46% had made changes to their initial will.
• For those who had made three or more changes, having children or grandchildren and relationship changes were significantly associated with will updates rather than changes in financial circumstances, work or health.
• Most testators in the prevalence survey had their will drawn up by a private general solicitor (58%) or a wills and estate specialist (15%). Only 6% used the Public Trustee (PT), prepared their will using hard copy or internet will kit (11%) or drew it up themselves (5%).

Challenging a Will:

• Challenging a will has a high rate of success whether it is through mediation or the courts.
• Will challenges are problematic with economic, social and relationship costs
• In the PT file review, 77% of claims were successful. Claims by partners/ex-partners were most successful (83% of cases), followed by children (76%), extended family (73%) and others (64%).
• The judicial case review shows a somewhat similar pattern with claims by partners/ex-partners most successful (88% of cases), followed by other (83%), extended family (71%) and children (69%).

Cost impact of challenging a Will on the Estate:

• In the PT file review the median cost incurred by estates was $11,900 (range $0-$500,000).
• In addition to costs incurred by estates, almost a quarter of disputants (24%) incurred costs from the dispute (median cost was $14,918, range $0-$105,000).
• Median estimated time between notification of the dispute and case closure was 9 months, highlighting further costs in terms of delays in estate administration.