Yes — a handwritten will can be perfectly valid in South Australia, provided it is signed and witnessed the way the Succession Act 2023 (SA) requires. Handwriting is not the problem. The problem is that people who handwrite a will usually skip the witnessing, and in SA that leaves the document's fate to section 11(2) and the Supreme Court of South Australia.
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 SA 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 South Australia can declare an informal document to be a valid will under section 11(2) of the Succession Act 2023 (SA), 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 South Australia the application goes to the Supreme Court of SA 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 SA is: there is a safety net, it is real, and it is expensive, slow and uncertain. It is not a plan.
South Australia charges on a sliding scale based on the value of the estate, so a larger estate pays a higher filing fee. Fees are generally reviewed on 1 July each year.
South Australia uses a tiered scale, so a smaller estate falls into a lower band. That helps — but only with the filing fee, which is the smallest number in this exercise.
The filing fee is not the real cost. A dispensing-power application means:
And if it does fail, Part 6 of the Succession Act 2023 (SA) decides who inherits instead. In South Australia that means a surviving partner takes the first $120,000 under section 105 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 SA.
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 South Australia takes a definite side.
In SA the gift survives. section 13 of the Succession Act 2023 (SA) means a beneficiary is not disqualified from taking merely because they witnessed the will. So a SA handwritten will witnessed by the person who inherits is still effective on that point.
That is genuinely good news, and it is why the same document would be treated very differently a state border away: in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory that gift would be void. Identical handwriting, identical family, opposite outcome.
It is still the wrong choice. A homemade will witnessed by its main beneficiary is the easiest kind of will to attack for undue influence — no solicitor's file note, no independent witness, and the person who benefited standing over the page. The gift is not void; it is merely contestable, at the estate's expense.
No. South Australia has no provision permitting a will to be witnessed by audio-visual link. South Australia allowed remote witnessing briefly during the pandemic, under the COVID-19 Emergency Response (Section 17) Regulations 2020, but those regulations became obsolete on 9 September 2021 and were never replaced with a permanent scheme. Notably, when South Australia completely rewrote its succession law in the Succession Act 2023, it did not take the opportunity to introduce electronic or remote signing. So a South Australian will must be signed with both witnesses physically present.
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 SA that document is not validly executed, and its only route to effect is a section 11(2) application to the Supreme Court of South Australia.
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 SA.
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 South Australia, a family provision claim must be brought within 6 months of the grant of probate, under section 118 of the Succession Act 2023 (SA). Section 118 requires an application to be made within 6 months after the grant of probate or administration. Note that this is now found in the Succession Act 2023 — the old Inheritance (Family Provision) Act 1972 was repealed on 1 January 2025, so older guides cite the wrong Act.
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 South Australia, exercising the dispensing power in section 11(2) of the Succession Act 2023 (SA). The application is filed at the Supreme Court of SA 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 SA court filing fee is tiered, so a smaller estate pays less. South Australia charges on a sliding scale based on the value of the estate, so a larger estate pays a higher filing fee. Fees are generally reviewed on 1 July each year. Legal costs for a contested dispensing-power application dwarf the filing fee and commonly run into thousands.
They can, and in South Australia their gift is not void for that reason — section 13 of the Succession Act 2023 (SA) preserves it. It is still unwise on a homemade will, because it hands any disappointed relative an undue-influence argument. Two independent witnesses cost nothing.
No. South Australia does not permit witnessing by video link, so the will is not validly executed and would need a section 11(2) application to have any effect. Only New South Wales and Victoria allow it.
6 months from the grant of probate, under section 118 of the Succession Act 2023 (SA). 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 2023 (SA) applies to it identically. Kits fail for the same reasons handwritten wills do, and in SA with the same consequence: section 11(2) and a court application. See whether an online will is legally valid in Australia for how a prepared will differs.
South Australia is the jurisdiction where out of date advice is most dangerous, because on 1 January 2025 it replaced three separate Acts with a single Succession Act 2023. Any guide citing the Wills Act 1936 is describing repealed law. On the substance, South Australia has the lowest preferential legacy in the country at $120,000 — a fifth of the New South Wales figure — and it has abolished the interested witness rule, so a gift to a witness still stands. Unlike New South Wales and Victoria, it does not permit remote witnessing, and it chose not to introduce it even when rewriting the whole Act.