Wills drafted by a Melbourne solicitor.

A will is a formal legal document that takes effect on your death. It records who receives your assets, who is responsible for carrying out your wishes, and who looks after any children under 18. In Victoria it only has legal effect if it is signed and witnessed to the standard the law sets, which is stricter than most people realise.

Everything else (gifts to family and friends, a specific item to a grandchild, a donation to a charity, instructions about a family home or a business) sits inside that framework. The document only works if it is precise: courts read the words you signed, not the intention you meant to express.

A will is also the place where planning happens. It can hold an inheritance in trust until a beneficiary is old enough, protect a child going through a relationship breakdown, or keep a business trading while the estate is administered.

A will only controls assets in your own name. Jointly owned property, most superannuation and assets held in a family trust or company pass outside it, which is why we review the whole picture, not just the document.

Victoria sets strict formalities for a valid will. Section 7 of the Wills Act 1997 governs how a will must be signed and witnessed, and the requirements are unforgiving: departures that look harmless can put the whole document in doubt.

This is where homemade and app-based wills come undone. A witness in the wrong place, the wrong person witnessing, or a signature added at the wrong moment can be enough to invalidate a will people believed was sound. A court can sometimes step in to rescue a defective will (sections 9 and 31 of the Act), but that is a contested application your family has to fund after you are gone. The formalities are straightforward to satisfy with a solicitor guiding the signing, and expensive to get wrong without one.

Two life events change your will automatically, whether you intend it or not. Marriage revokes your existing will, unless the will was made in contemplation of that particular marriage. Marry after signing a will that didn't anticipate it, and you're treated as having died without one: one of the most common reasons a will someone believed was in place turns out to be worthless.

Divorce works differently. Under section 14 of the Wills Act 1997 a divorce or annulment doesn't revoke your whole will, but it cancels any gift to your former spouse and their appointment as executor, trustee or guardian; the will then operates as if they had died before you. Separation alone changes nothing, which catches people out: until a divorce is finalised, a will still benefits an estranged spouse. Review your will after any marriage, separation, divorce, new child or major change in what you own.

Your executor steps in when you die: they collect your assets, pay your debts and tax, and distribute the estate to the people you named. It's a real job, so the choice matters more than most people expect.

Anyone you trust can act, but the right choice is rarely as obvious as it looks. A beneficiary, an independent professional and a family member each carry different advantages and different risks, and the wrong appointment is one of the more common reasons an estate ends up in conflict. It is worth thinking through before you name someone.

The single most important clause is a substitute. If your only executor dies, can't act, or doesn't want the role and you haven't named a replacement, someone must apply to the court for letters of administration with the will annexed before the estate can be touched: extra cost and delay at the worst possible time. We always build in substitutes, and where a family is complicated we'll talk to you about an independent executor to keep the peace.

Leaving a gift is rarely as simple as writing a name next to an item. A gift only works if you still own the thing when you die: leave a specific car, parcel of shares or named property, sell or replace it before you die, and the gift usually fails entirely and the beneficiary receives nothing. Lawyers call this ademption, and it's why a well-drafted will describes gifts carefully and deals with what happens if the asset changes.

Timing and wording carry the same traps. A gift can lapse if a beneficiary dies close to you, an asset can change so a bequest no longer fits, and leaving someone out is riskier than it looks: handled without the right steps, it can invite the very family provision claim it was meant to avoid. These are the details that decide whether a gift takes effect the way you intended, and they are exactly what a template does not handle.

This is the single biggest misunderstanding we see, and for many people superannuation is their largest asset after the home. Your super isn't owned by you the way your bank account is; it's held in trust by your fund, and when you die the trustee decides who receives it under the fund's rules. Your will doesn't control it. Super only follows your will if you have a valid binding death benefit nomination directing it to your legal personal representative (your estate), so it can then be distributed under the will.

Binding nominations also lapse, generally after three years, unless a self-managed fund's deed allows a non-lapsing one, so a nomination you signed years ago may no longer be effective. The consequences are real: in one well-known case a widower who was the sole remaining trustee of the couple's self-managed fund paid his late wife's entire death benefit to himself, despite her will leaving it to the children, because her binding nomination had lapsed. We review your nominations alongside your will so the two point the same way.

If you die without a valid will you die intestate, and a rigid statutory formula in Part 1A of the Administration and Probate Act 1958 decides who receives your estate, not you. It rarely matches what people assume. In blended families especially, the formula can divide your estate between a partner and children in ways you would never have chosen, and it takes no account of who you were actually closest to.

Someone must also apply to the Supreme Court of Victoria before anything can be distributed, which adds cost, delay and formality at the hardest possible time. A short, properly drafted will replaces the whole formula with your actual wishes, which is usually the entire point of making one.