Yes — a handwritten will can be perfectly valid in Western Australia, provided it is signed and witnessed the way the Wills Act 1970 (WA) requires. Handwriting is not the problem. The problem is that people who handwrite a will usually skip the witnessing, and in WA that leaves the document's fate to section 32 and the Supreme Court of Western 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 WA 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 Western Australia can declare an informal document to be a valid will under section 32 of the Wills Act 1970 (WA), 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 Western Australia the application goes to the Supreme Court of WA 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 WA is: there is a safety net, it is real, and it is expensive, slow and uncertain. It is not a plan.
Western Australia charges a flat filing fee of $408.00 for an application for a grant of probate or administration, effective from 1 July 2025, regardless of the size of the estate. That is one of the lowest probate filing fees in the country — roughly a quarter of what the Northern Territory charges.
Note that Western Australia 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 WA estate pays the full amount regardless.
The filing fee is not the real cost. A dispensing-power application means:
And if it does fail, the Administration Act 1903 (WA) decides who inherits instead. In Western Australia that means a surviving partner takes the first $472,000 under section 14 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 WA.
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 Western Australia takes a definite side.
In WA the gift survives. A beneficiary is not disqualified from taking merely because they witnessed the will. So a WA 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. Western Australia has no provision permitting a will to be witnessed by audio-visual link. Western Australia never introduced permanent legislation allowing wills to be signed or witnessed electronically, and it did not put temporary pandemic rules in place for succession documents either. That means the traditional requirement still applies in full: you and both witnesses must be physically together, in the same room, watching each other sign. A will witnessed over Zoom or FaceTime in Western Australia is not validly executed, and the family would have to ask the Supreme Court to admit it as an informal will under section 32.
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 WA that document is not validly executed, and its only route to effect is a section 32 application to the Supreme Court of Western 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 WA.
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 Western Australia, a family provision claim must be brought within 6 months of the grant of probate, under section 7 of the Family Provision Act 1972 (WA). Western Australia's six month window runs from the grant of probate or administration rather than from the date of death.
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 Western Australia, exercising the dispensing power in section 32 of the Wills Act 1970 (WA). The application is filed at the Supreme Court of WA 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 WA court filing fee is flat, so estate size makes no difference to it. Western Australia charges a flat filing fee of $408.00 for an application for a grant of probate or administration, effective from 1 July 2025, regardless of the size of the estate. That is one of the lowest probate filing fees in the country — roughly a quarter of what the Northern Territory charges. Legal costs for a contested dispensing-power application dwarf the filing fee and commonly run into thousands.
They can, and in Western Australia their gift is not void for that reason. It is still unwise on a homemade will, because it hands any disappointed relative an undue-influence argument. Two independent witnesses cost nothing.
No. Western Australia does not permit witnessing by video link, so the will is not validly executed and would need a section 32 application to have any effect. Only New South Wales and Victoria allow it.
6 months from the grant of probate, under section 7 of the Family Provision Act 1972 (WA). 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 1970 (WA) applies to it identically. Kits fail for the same reasons handwritten wills do, and in WA with the same consequence: section 32 and a court application. See whether an online will is legally valid in Australia for how a prepared will differs.
Western Australia runs its own race on succession law, and in two respects it is more forgiving than the eastern states. A gift to someone who witnessed your will still stands here, where in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory it would be void. Its flat probate fee of $408 is a quarter of the Northern Territory's $1,585, and there is no sliding scale to worry about. But WA has not modernised signing: unlike New South Wales and Victoria, a will still has to be witnessed with everyone physically present.