Yes — a handwritten will can be perfectly valid in Tasmania, provided it is signed and witnessed the way the Wills Act 2008 (Tas) requires. Handwriting is not the problem. The problem is that people who handwrite a will usually skip the witnessing, and in TAS that leaves the document's fate to section 10 and the Supreme Court of Tasmania.
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 TAS 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 Tasmania can declare an informal document to be a valid will under section 10 of the Wills Act 2008 (Tas), 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 Tasmania the application goes to the Supreme Court of Tasmania 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 TAS is: there is a safety net, it is real, and it is expensive, slow and uncertain. It is not a plan.
Tasmania charges on a sliding scale based on the value of the estate, with the fee rising as the estate gets larger. Fees are generally reviewed on 1 July each year.
Tasmania 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, the Intestacy Act 2010 (Tas) decides who inherits instead. In Tasmania that means a surviving partner takes the first $350,000 plus CPI under section 7 of the Intestacy Act 2010 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 TAS.
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 Tasmania takes a definite side.
In TAS it destroys the gift. Under section 12 of the Wills Act 2008 (Tas), 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 more than two people signed as witnesses and at least two of them are not beneficiaries or the partner of a beneficiary, or everyone who would gain from the gift failing consents in writing. Section 13 also lets the Court be asked to validate 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 TAS rule: the same signature would not cost a Victorian, South Australian, Western Australian or ACT beneficiary a cent.
No. Tasmania has no provision permitting a will to be witnessed by audio-visual link. Tasmania's pandemic legislation, the COVID-19 Disease Emergency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020, did not extend to succession documents, and no permanent remote witnessing scheme has been introduced since. A Tasmanian will must therefore be signed with both witnesses physically present in the same room. A will witnessed by video link is not validly executed, and the family would need to apply to the Supreme Court under section 10 to have it admitted as an informal will.
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 TAS that document is not validly executed, and its only route to effect is a section 10 application to the Supreme Court of Tasmania.
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 TAS.
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 Tasmania, a family provision claim must be brought within 3 months of the grant of probate, under section 11 of the Testator's Family Maintenance Act 1912 (Tas). Three months is by far the shortest window in Australia — a quarter of the time a New South Wales family would have. Section 11 states the Court has no jurisdiction to hear an application unless it is brought not later than three months after the grant of probate. The Court can extend that time, but nobody should count on it.
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 Tasmania, exercising the dispensing power in section 10 of the Wills Act 2008 (Tas). The application is filed at the Supreme Court of Tasmania 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 TAS court filing fee is tiered, so a smaller estate pays less. Tasmania charges on a sliding scale based on the value of the estate, with the fee rising as the estate gets larger. 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 sign as a witness, but if they also inherit their gift is void under section 12 of the Wills Act 2008 (Tas). Since a spouse is usually the main beneficiary, this is close to the worst available choice of witness in TAS. Ask two people who inherit nothing.
No. Tasmania does not permit witnessing by video link, so the will is not validly executed and would need a section 10 application to have any effect. Only New South Wales and Victoria allow it.
3 months from the grant of probate, under section 11 of the Testator's Family Maintenance Act 1912 (Tas). 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 Wills Act 2008 (Tas) applies to it identically. Kits fail for the same reasons handwritten wills do, and in TAS with the same consequence: section 10 and a court application. See whether an online will is legally valid in Australia for how a prepared will differs.
Tasmania stands out for one reason above all: it has the shortest deadline in Australia to contest a will, at three months from the grant of probate. New South Wales allows twelve. That single difference can decide whether a left out family member has any remedy at all. Tasmania is also strict on witnesses — a gift to someone who witnessed your will is void here, as in New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory, though section 13 does let the Court be asked to validate it. And like most of the country outside New South Wales and Victoria, Tasmania requires everyone to be physically present at the signing.