Yes — a handwritten will can be perfectly valid in Queensland, provided it is signed and witnessed the way the Succession Act 1981 (Qld) requires. Handwriting is not the problem. The problem is that people who handwrite a will usually skip the witnessing, and in QLD that leaves the document's fate to section 18 and the Supreme Court of Queensland.
Whether a handwritten will works is not really a question about handwriting — it is a question about what your state's court can do with an imperfect document. That answer differs across Australia, and this page covers the QLD position. For the national points — why Australia has no holograph will, who may act as a witness, and how to write gifts that are not ambiguous — see who can witness a will and how to sign a will correctly.
If your handwritten will was not properly witnessed, it is not automatically worthless. The Supreme Court of Queensland can declare an informal document to be a valid will under section 18 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld), if satisfied that you intended that document to operate as your will.
Every Australian jurisdiction has a power like this, but they sit in different Acts and different sections, and the case law interpreting them is state by state. In Queensland the application goes to the Supreme Court of Queensland Probate Registry, and it is a genuine contested proceeding rather than a form-filling exercise.
What the court must be satisfied of is the point people miss. It is not enough that the document is obviously in your handwriting, or that its meaning is clear. The question is whether you intended this particular document to be your will — not a draft, not a note of what you were planning to do properly later. Courts refuse applications on exactly that distinction, and a document headed "notes for my will" is a much harder case than one headed "my will".
So the honest summary for QLD is: there is a safety net, it is real, and it is expensive, slow and uncertain. It is not a plan.
Queensland charges a single flat filing fee for a grant of probate regardless of whether the estate is worth $50,000 or $5 million. There is also a mandatory notice of intention to apply, published in the Queensland Law Reporter, which costs extra.
Note that Queensland charges a flat filing fee, so there is no small-estate relief. In New South Wales an estate under $100,000 pays no filing fee at all, and in Victoria the threshold is $250,000. A modest QLD estate pays the full amount regardless.
The filing fee is not the real cost. A dispensing-power application means:
And if it does fail, Part 3 and Schedule 2 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld) decides who inherits instead. In Queensland that means a surviving partner takes the first $150,000 under Schedule 2 with the balance shared with the children, and anyone else your note named — a sibling, a friend, a charity, a stepchild — receives nothing. The detail is on who inherits without a will in QLD.
When someone writes a will at the kitchen table, the two people available to witness it are usually the two people closest to them — a spouse, an adult child, a sibling. Very often, the beneficiaries. This is the single most common defect in homemade wills, and it is the one where Queensland takes a definite side.
In QLD it destroys the gift. Under section 11 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld), a gift to someone who witnessed the will is void so far as it concerns them. Note how cruel that combination is with a handwritten will: the document can be perfectly valid, pass probate without difficulty, and still leave the main beneficiary with nothing, because they held the pen as a witness.
It can only be rescued if at least two of the witnesses who signed are not beneficiaries, or everyone who would gain from the gift failing consents in writing, or the Court is satisfied the will-maker knew about and freely approved the gift — and every one of those routes needs either a court application or the active goodwill of the people who gain if the gift fails.
A prepared will avoids this because the signing instructions say plainly who must not witness. A blank sheet of paper gives no such warning. And note that this is a QLD rule: the same signature would not cost a Victorian, South Australian, Western Australian or ACT beneficiary a cent.
No. Queensland has no provision permitting a will to be witnessed by audio-visual link. This one catches people out, because Queensland did allow it for a while. During the pandemic a temporary regulation modified the Succession Act 1981 so that wills could be witnessed over a video link, but that modification ended on 29 April 2022. The permanent reforms that followed, in Part 6A of the Oaths Act 1867, cover affidavits and statutory declarations — not wills. So the position today is that a Queensland will must be signed with both witnesses physically present in the same room. Advice written between 2020 and 2022 may tell you otherwise, and it is now out of date.
This matters because the two habits travel together: someone handwrites a will and then tries to have it witnessed over FaceTime by relatives interstate. In QLD that document is not validly executed, and its only route to effect is a section 18 application to the Supreme Court of Queensland.
Only New South Wales and Victoria permit remote witnessing. Much of the advice suggesting otherwise was written during the pandemic, when temporary rules applied more widely — those rules have lapsed in QLD.
Informal and homemade wills are litigated out of all proportion to their number, for obvious reasons: no solicitor's record of instructions, no independent witness to capacity, often ambiguous wording, and frequently a family member who feels the document does not reflect what they were told.
In Queensland, a family provision claim must be brought within 9 months of the date of death, under section 41 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld). Queensland has a two stage clock, which is unusual. Written notice of an intention to claim must be given to the executor within 6 months of the death, and the actual court application must be filed within 9 months of the death. Miss the notice step and an executor may lawfully distribute the estate.
Where a dispensing-power application is also needed, the two proceedings can overlap and compound — one argument about whether the document is a will at all, and another about whether it provided adequately for someone. That is an expensive way for an estate to spend its first year.
Do not destroy it yet — while it is your most recent expression of intention it may still have value. Do this instead:
The Supreme Court of Queensland, exercising the dispensing power in section 18 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld). The application is filed at the Supreme Court of Queensland Probate Registry, must be brought by someone with an interest in the estate, and is paid for out of the estate. It does not happen automatically.
The QLD court filing fee is flat, so estate size makes no difference to it. Queensland charges a single flat filing fee for a grant of probate regardless of whether the estate is worth $50,000 or $5 million. There is also a mandatory notice of intention to apply, published in the Queensland Law Reporter, which costs extra. Legal costs for a contested dispensing-power application dwarf the filing fee and commonly run into thousands.
They can sign as a witness, but if they also inherit their gift is void under section 11 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld). Since a spouse is usually the main beneficiary, this is close to the worst available choice of witness in QLD. Ask two people who inherit nothing.
No. Queensland does not permit witnessing by video link, so the will is not validly executed and would need a section 18 application to have any effect. Only New South Wales and Victoria allow it.
9 months from the date of death, under section 41 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld). Informal wills attract challenges more often than professionally prepared ones, so this window is more than theoretical.
It can be — a kit is just a printed form, and the Succession Act 1981 (Qld) applies to it identically. Kits fail for the same reasons handwritten wills do, and in QLD with the same consequence: section 18 and a court application. See whether an online will is legally valid in Australia for how a prepared will differs.
Queensland is the strictest jurisdiction in Australia on the spouse's share. Where a New South Wales spouse would receive $611,387.84 before the children take anything, a Queensland spouse receives $150,000 — and because that figure is not indexed, it buys less every year. Queensland also gives families the shortest death based deadline to contest at 9 months, with a separate 6 month notice requirement on top. And while its eastern neighbours New South Wales and Victoria both permit video witnessing, Queensland's pandemic era allowance expired in April 2022.