If the deceased does not have a will, the application for appointment as the estate executor by relatives or friends may encounter more difficulties compared to the situation with a will. The application documents will no longer be probate but rather a letter of adminstration. Since there is no designated executor in the will, various parties may challenge each other during the application process. Additionally, due to the absence of a will, the court may have a lot more requisition.
In New South Wales, generally speaking, in the absence of a will, the inheritance priority, from highest to lowest, is as follows: spouse, children, parents, siblings, uncles and aunts, and the state.
Only the original copy of a will can be used to apply for probate. If the original will cannot be found, the court's default assumption is that the deceased intentionally revoked and destroyed the will. Beneficiaries would need multiple pieces of evidence to convince the court that the deceased merely misplaced the original will rather than intentionally revoking and destroying it.
From the above, it is evident that drafting and properly preserving even the original copy of a simple will can save significant trouble after one's passing and conserve a substantial amount of time and effort for the beneficiaries.
博通在澳洲悉尼的遗产遗嘱律师可以为您申请授权信。
