We work both sides of this. We draft wills built to survive a challenge, and we run the challenges, which is why we know what fails. If someone close to you has died and you’ve been left out or left short, there’s a 12-month deadline and a practical one that’s shorter. If you’re the executor, there’s an estate to administer properly and a personal liability if you don’t. Either way, the first conversation is free.
Recent death in the family? Tell us the date. It decides everything else.
Four situations, four different clocks. Tap the one that's yours.
If someone has died recently, two facts decide everything else: the date of death, and whether probate has been applied for. Both are worth finding out this week.
Drafting wills built to survive a claim, and running the claims when they weren't.
Two things go wrong with estates. The first is that the will didn’t do what the person thought it did, usually because the family changed after it was signed or because the biggest assets never passed under it at all. The second is that somebody was left out who the court thinks shouldn’t have been. We draft against both, and when it’s too late for that, we run the claim.
Simple and complex, blended families, business and self-managed super assets, testamentary trusts, and structuring to reduce the risk of a claim.
Financial and personal decision-making if capacity is lost, and advance care planning. The documents nobody thinks about until it is too late to sign them.
Applications in the Supreme Court of NSW, including where there is no will, where the executor will not act, or where an earlier will surfaces.
Calling in assets, paying debts, dealing with the tax, distributing, and protecting the executor from personal liability along the way.
Who inherits when there is no will, the statutory order under the Succession Act, and disputes about where a person falls within it.
Removing an executor, compelling accounts, and disputes between co-executors who cannot agree on anything including whether to sell the house.
Family provision claims under the Succession Act for eligible people left out of a will, or left with less than adequate provision.
Acting for executors and beneficiaries resisting a claim, including where the claimant's eligibility itself is in question.
Testamentary capacity, undue influence, suspicious circumstances, improper execution and forgery, and probate caveats to pause the grant.
Claims reaching assets that passed outside the estate: joint property, transfers before death, superannuation, and some trust and company holdings. New South Wales only.
Twelve months is when you lose the right to claim. Six months is when the money leaves. Only one of those is recoverable.
One of these is in the legislation. One of them isn't, and it's the one that decides whether there's an estate left to claim against.
Two things go wrong with estates. The first is that the will didn’t do what the person thought it did, usually because the family changed after it was signed or because the biggest assets never passed under it at all. The second is that somebody was left out who the court thinks shouldn’t have been. We draft against both, and when it’s too late for that, we run the claim. Doing both is the point: you can’t write a will that survives a family provision claim if you’ve never seen one succeed.
From the date of death, under s 58 of the Succession Act 2006. Not from the grant of probate, which is the mistake people make most. The court can allow a late application for sufficient cause, but it is decided alongside the claim itself and a weak claim rarely gets the extension.
An executor is only protected on distribution once six months have passed since death and a notice of intended distribution has run. That protection does not apply if they already have notice of your claim. Tell the executor inside six months and the estate stays where it is.
A caveat preventing a grant of probate stays in force for six months and can be extended. It is the cheapest way to pause an estate while the validity of a will is looked at properly.
Practice Note SC Eq 7 requires mediation in every family provision claim before a hearing date is allocated. Most claims end there, which is worth knowing if what you are picturing is a courtroom.
The twelve months is the one in the legislation. The six months is the one that decides whether there is anything left to claim against. Every competitor page leads with the first. If you take one thing from this page, take the second.
Tell us the date and whether probate has been applied for. Twenty minutes, no charge, and you’ll know which deadlines are still open to you.
New South Wales is the only Australian state where assets that never formed part of the estate can be brought back into it.
This is the part of New South Wales succession law that surprises people, including people who’ve been advised elsewhere. In every other Australian state, if an asset didn’t form part of the estate, it’s out of reach. In NSW it may not be. Under sections 75 to 93 of the Succession Act 2006, the Supreme Court can designate property as notional estate and make it available to satisfy a family provision order, even though it never passed under the will.
A home held as joint tenants passes to the survivor by survivorship and never enters the estate. In New South Wales the court can still designate it, because failing to sever the joint tenancy before death is itself treated as a relevant property transaction.
In Sydney, where the home is routinely joint and often worth more than everything else combined, this is usually the whole case rather than a footnote to it.
Property given away, sold at an undervalue, or restructured in the years before death can be brought back in. The court looks at what was disposed of without full valuable consideration.
Doing it deliberately to defeat a claim does not make it safer. It makes it easier to see, and it tends to shape how the rest of the case is read.
Super paid to a nominated beneficiary does not form part of the estate, which is why so many people assume it is untouchable. It can still be designated notional estate in the right circumstances.
Whether it can turns on the timing of the nomination, how it was structured, and whether the fund trustee kept any discretion.
Assets held through a structure are not automatically out of reach. The analysis is more involved and the outcome less predictable than with a house in joint names.
It is the area where advice given in another state, or given before anyone looked at the trust deed, is most likely to be wrong.
A notional estate order can only follow a family provision order, and the court has to be satisfied that the actual estate is not sufficient to make the provision or meet the costs. It then weighs a further set of statutory factors, including the contributions of whoever currently holds the property and how reasonable their expectations were. Anyone telling you the family home is simply available has skipped two steps.
If you are making a will, notional estate is the reason "just put it in joint names" is not a strategy. It is also the reason a will that looks watertight in Melbourne may not be in Sydney.
If you have been left out of an estate that appears to be worth nothing, it is the reason not to give up before someone has looked at what the deceased owned five years ago rather than five minutes before they died.
General information only. This page describes the law in New South Wales in general terms and is not legal advice for your situation. Notional estate provisions have no equivalent in the other Australian states. Reviewed September 2026.
Told the estate isn’t worth claiming against?
Twenty minutes, no charge. Tell us what the deceased owned and how it was held, and we’ll tell you whether notional estate reaches it.
One practice, both sides of the estate, which is the only way to learn what actually fails.
Estate work splits neatly in two, and almost every firm picks a side. There are practices that draft wills and practices that contest them, and they rarely learn much from each other. We do both, and that is the point rather than a boast: you cannot draft a will that survives a family provision claim if you have never watched one succeed, and you cannot assess a claim properly if you have never sat on the other side of it advising an executor.
What that means in practice is that the first conversation is about the same three things whichever side you are on. What the deceased actually owned, as opposed to what the will says. Who might claim, and whether they are eligible. And how much time is left before the estate stops being a thing you can reach.
Most of these matters are decided by facts that existed years before anyone died: whose name the house was in, whether the super nomination was ever updated, what was transferred and when. That is where we start, because that is where the answer is.
Tell us that first. It sets the twelve months, the six months, and whether the estate is likely to still be intact.
Mediation is required before a hearing date is allocated, and the majority of family provision matters resolve at or before it.
Grosvenor Place, 225 George Street. Every family provision claim in the state is heard in the Supreme Court, minutes away.
Both sides of the estate, current on the NSW-only rules, and honest about the deadline that matters.
We draft wills and we contest them. Doing one without the other is how you end up with a will that reads beautifully and fails, because nobody ever asked who was going to claim against it.
No other Australian state has it. Advice built on the law elsewhere, or on the assumption that joint ownership settles the matter, does not apply here and is the single most common thing we have to unwind.
You will hear that at the first call rather than the eleventh month, because the twelve months is when you lose the right to claim and the six months is when the money leaves. Only one of those is recoverable.
Grosvenor Place, 225 George Street. Every family provision claim in New South Wales is heard in the Supreme Court, and the Family Provision List sits minutes from the office.
Executor removal, contested probate and notional estate applications all run in the Supreme Court on the same procedure as any other civil claim, with the same evidence, the same interlocutory steps and the same costs exposure if it goes badly. Estate work that is only ever done at a desk tends to find that out late.
No charge for the first conversation. Confidential.
Two clocks run from the date of death, and the shorter one is the one nobody tells you about.
The 12 months is when you lose the right to claim. The 6 months is when the money leaves.
Wills & Estates
Sydney CBD. Executor about to distribute? Say so and we will move it to the front.
Twelve months from the date of death, under s 58 of the Succession Act 2006 (NSW). Not twelve months from the grant of probate, which is the most common misunderstanding. The court can extend the period for sufficient cause, but extensions are difficult, are decided at the same time as the claim itself, and are usually refused if the underlying claim is weak. In practice you should notify the executor within about six months, before the estate can be distributed.
Yes. Probate doesn't close the door: it confirms the will's validity and lets the executor administer the estate. The 12-month clock runs from death regardless. What changes after probate is the practical difficulty. If the estate has been distributed, you may need to trace assets and rely on the notional estate provisions to recover them, which costs more and takes longer than acting before distribution.
Under the Succession Act, an eligible person includes a spouse or de facto partner at the date of death, a child of the deceased including an adopted child, a former spouse, a person who was wholly or partly dependent on the deceased and who was a grandchild or a member of the same household, and a person living in a close personal relationship with the deceased at death. Some categories, including former spouses and dependants, also have to show factors warranting the application. Stepchildren are not automatically eligible, which surprises people.
Because New South Wales is the only state that has it. Under ss 75 to 93 of the Succession Act, the Supreme Court can designate property that never formed part of the estate as notional estate and make it available to satisfy a family provision order. That can include a home held as joint tenants that passed by survivorship, property transferred before death, superannuation paid to a nominated beneficiary, and in some cases assets held through a trust or company. It means an estate that looks empty may still be worth claiming against, and it means structuring assets to avoid a claim is far less effective here than elsewhere.
It depends on how far it runs, and most claims don't run far: mediation is required in every family provision matter before a hearing date is allocated, and most settle at or before that point. You are generally responsible for your own costs as you go. If the claim succeeds the court may order the estate to pay some or all of your costs, but that's a discretion, not a rule, and unsuccessful claimants can be ordered to pay the estate's costs. We'll give you a view on the likely range and on whether the claim is worth running before you commit to it.
The main grounds are that the deceased lacked testamentary capacity when the will was made, that it was made under undue influence or coercion, that it wasn't properly executed, or that it's a forgery. This is a different claim from a family provision claim: one says the will is invalid, the other accepts the will but asks the court to adjust what it gives you. If validity is genuinely in issue, a probate caveat filed under Part 78 of the Supreme Court Rules can prevent a grant while it's investigated, and it stays in force for six months.
Apply for probate where required, identify and call in the assets, pay the debts and the tax, and distribute to the beneficiaries. The two things executors get wrong are distributing too early and distributing to the wrong people, and either can make you personally liable to a beneficiary or a successful claimant. Publishing a notice of intended distribution and waiting the statutory periods, including at least six months from death, is the protection. If a claim has been notified, do not distribute without advice.
It might, and the question is what "hold up" means. A homemade or online will can be validly executed and still fail its purpose completely, because the assets that matter pass outside it, because it doesn't deal with a blended family, or because it leaves out someone with a strong family provision claim. The wills we most often see contested are not the invalid ones. They're the valid ones that were drafted without anyone asking who might claim.
Bring the date of death, a copy of the will if you have one, and whether probate has been applied for.
Including what may be reachable as notional estate, which is often more than the estate itself.
A written estimate before any work begins. No open accounts.
Sydney and regional NSW court appearances for interstate and out-of-town solicitors. Fixed fee, same-day confirmation, court-by-court pricing.
Contract, shareholder, debt and business disputes in every NSW court. A written view on prospects and cost before you commit to a fight.
Unfair dismissal, general protections, redundancy and restraints of trade. Acting for employees and employers. Strict 21-day deadlines apply.
Separation, property settlement, parenting arrangements and de facto claims. Clear advice at a difficult time, without inflaming it.
Wills, powers of attorney, probate and estate administration, and contesting a will in NSW. Structured properly the first time, so your family isn't left arguing.
Company structures, shareholders agreements, contracts and business sales. Set up properly now, so the dispute never starts.
Leave your name and number. A lawyer calls you back, tells you where you stand and what happens next. No charge, no obligation.
Twenty minutes with a lawyer. You'll leave the call knowing where you stand, what your options are, and what the first step costs.
