It is no secret that inheritance disputes are flooding our Supreme Court, and similarly nationwide.
From our day to day working perspectives at Solomon Hollett Lawyers, we see the devastating effect of these fights on families as the unpleasant skeletons are brought out of the closets and the laundry visibly aired, but also on the family fortunes, as the assets are sliced and diced and ultimately diminished by the costs of litigation.
It is also no secret that one of the key drivers for the increase in inheritance disputes is the so-called Great Wealth Transfer, the movement on death of an estimated $5.4 trillion dollars in Australia from the Baby Boomer and Silent Generations down the line.
This Great Wealth Transfer is a result of an unparalleled economic miracle that has occurred in Western societies post WWII and is unlikely to ever be repeated on the same scale. The Boomers (aged 62 to 80 years old) and their parents, the Silent Gen (aged 81 to 95) are the beneficiaries of once in human history economic circumstances that has resulted in enormous acquisition of assets and equity in property.
These two generations combined represent 28% of the population, however they hold 67% of the nation’s wealth.
But it is not just that the size of the inheritances up for grabs has created such fertile landscape for dispute, although that is a driver by itself given the simple mathematics of risk versus reward all litigants must calculate. There are other factors at play.
And it was these questions that drove our firm to first undertake a serious survey of the WA public around inheritance.
In 2025 we published the inaugural Inheritance State of Play in WA Report, which revealed the responses from 971 West Aussies surveyed in late 2024 about all things inheritance – estate planning, Will currency, expectations of giving and receiving, anticipation of disputes and much more.
We also invited respondents via open text fields in the survey to tell us the things that worry them or drive them toward their thinking about their own inheritance issues – not just the bad but the good. The responses were illuminating in their frankness about what are the hopes and dreams of inheritance as well as the fears.
This year we did it again, and engaged the same leading market research company to undertake a similar survey of Western Australians, but with a slightly different focus.
The brand new Report revealed some interesting changes to the statistics and findings from the prior Report but also dug into questions around why disputes arise in the first place.
Some key findings from the Report and my observations from the data are as follows.
An alarming and deeply concerning 44% of Western Australian adults are at risk of dying intestate. This is comprised of 41% who admit to having no Will, and another 3% who are unsure if they have one. The unsure group may either be embarrassed to admit they don’t, or more likely, may have had a go at a home made Will at some point which is long since misplaced.
The survey revealed that will coverage is, as expected, wildly different amongst different generations. The Silent Generation win the gold star with 95% of them having a Will in place, Boomers close behind at 90%.
But the numbers drop rapidly from there, with only 50% of Generation X having a Will, 34% of Millennials and 19% of Gen Z.
Of these groups, Generation X is deeply concerning; they are now aged 46 to 61 years old and largely in their prime earning years, with families and dependents of their own. The prospect for intestacy disaster is far too high in this cohort.
But there is also a sleeping issue buried in plain sight with the Boomer and Silent Will coverage. Whilst the overwhelming majority of them have a Will, a very large proportion have old Wills. 53.3% of the Silent Generation Wills are more than 5 years old, and 33% are more than 10 years old.
Will currency overall is poor, with 14% of all respondents having a Will that is more than 10 years old. Whilst this negates the almost invariable horror show of intestacy, in our experience a Will more than a decade old is most likely not doing the job it was initially designed to do, by virtue of changes in personal circumstances like new beneficiaries coming into the frame such as grandchildren, or changed relationships such as de facto partners, or changes in asset structure and size which may make certain gifts and provisions irrelevant or out of scale.
The increased rise of superannuation as a key asset in many people’s portfolios and its intersection with Wills (with many older Wills not properly dealing with super) is a constant driver of dispute.
In the case of the Silent Generation in particular, being over the age of 80 years old creates much greater likelihood of loss of mental capacity which may be modest, allowing new estate planning, or reach a threshold where the last Will cannot be changed.
Wills made by the very elderly, close to death, are often the subject of hard fought and expensive validity disputes through applications for proof of the Will in Solemn Form, requiring large amounts of medical and witness evidence as to capacity.
The combination of these groups is some 58% of us who fall into the high-risk camp for estate disputes.
And Will coverage is not even amongst the genders, with 68% of men having a Will in place, but a much lower 45% of women. This is also a minefield waiting to explode, as latest ABS data reveals women outlive men on average by 4 years. For traditional couples this 4-year period usually means the surviving female spouse is the sole custodian of all the assets of the relationship, and is unprepared for her own demise within a vanishingly small window to put good estate planning in place.
The very elderly are in particular prone to this outcome, and the dispute prospects, adverse tax consequences and unpredictability on intestacy creates some extremely sub-optimal inheritance outcomes especially in the eyes of the beneficiaries hoping to have a smooth transition of the assets.
Just as the Boomers and Silent Generation are in focus on the givers of the wealth, we looked at the issues on the receiving end as well. A deeply troubling 32% of Millennials and 35% of Gen Z consider that receiving an inheritance is either very important or critical to their own long term financial security. This is borne out in the constant refrain heard around the country of their inability to afford their own home and being locked out of the housing market.
This is matched by 41% of the Boomers and Silents revealing they are aware of and understand the importance of their children receiving this inheritance in order to get ahead.
An interesting cohort of potential new claimants emerge here. These are adult children who may not look like traditional Family Provision Act claimants. They may be well educated, holding down good jobs with steady and large incomes, and who on the surface look to be prospering.
However, their acknowledged need for inheritance is based on the staggering debt levels they carry, most often mortgage debt for their home and lifestyle including school fees, and which debt is so high that without the injection of inheritance they will continue to struggle financially and barely keep afloat.
In concert with the acknowledged need for inheritance by the beneficiaries and the acknowledged reliance on it, 50% of those under the age of 45 are expecting an inheritance dispute within their own family.
Over the whole survey, 35% of respondents expect there to be an inheritance dispute in their family. This is high, but is also a reduction from last year’s Report which found almost 60% expecting a dispute.
Drilling into this data to explore this change over the last year revealed that the numbers vary greatly across different generations.
Whilst only 9% of the Silent Generation believe there will be an inheritance dispute, 57% of Gen Z are sure there will be one. Millennials are next at 47% and Gen X at 34%. Only 20% of the Boomers believed there would be an inheritance dispute.
Amongst all groups though, the sense was the greatest likelihood of dispute was between siblings, which is borne out by our day-to-day experience litigating Wills.
The gap between the generations in predicting disputes gives us a fascinating insight into the minds of the givers versus the receivers. The givers are much more convinced everything will be rosy, but the receivers are not. We believe this great discrepancy in reading the family landscape between the generations is underpinned by the next statistic.
A new line of data was unearthed around whether the family had had any meaningful conversations about inheritance.
Only 18% have had a detailed conversation about estate planning in their family.
The largest group of 48% had had some discussion, but nothing meaningful.
And another 18.2% have not only not had any conversation at all, but never intend to have one either.
Further, men are more likely to have had a detailed conversation at 20.6% against only 15.6% of women.
Age also plays a role here. Only 9.8% of those aged 18 to 34 have had a detailed estate planning conversation in the family, and yet 57.8% of this same cohort anticipate an inheritance dispute. Further, 27.5% of this same age range are in the group have evinced an intention to never have such a conversation at all.
The irony, or rather, the tragedy of this, is that the younger cohorts who are most braced for conflict are the least prepared to prevent it and are of their own admission the most in need of it. They are sure of an incoming fight but are less willing or perhaps feel unable to do anything to prevent it.
This family conversation data is enormously telling for us in our day-to-day practice. Time and time again we see that families that face these issues head on, and who grapple with what are often deeply uncomfortable discussions, have superior estate planning outcomes. These conversations may not negate dispute entirely, but they can modify it to a degree that keeps the dispute manageable or simple.
On that front, we acknowledge that the word ‘dispute’ is doing a lot of heaving lifting here. It is a spectrum ranging from mere disappointment at one end, perhaps some terse words and a change to further relationships, through to full scale litigation at the other end. But on all levels of dispute, once it starts the family is now altered, and we rarely see families rebuild and become harmonious once a dispute is ventilated.
It is for these reasons we believe the single biggest change to the dispute landscape could be by encouraging families to have meaningful conversations about their estates and inheritance during life. Often we find that once the Will maker has died, that their Will was crafted based on various assumptions about their children and dependents, without actually ever taking the time to ask them.
Very often the start of a dispute is the sudden seismic shock of seeing the Will for the first time only after the deceased is buried, and expectations, or understandings or promises are not made good by the Will. The burden of this conversation falls on both sides of the equation – the duty is not just for the Will maker to engage, but for the beneficiaries to do so too.
But taken in hand, and with goodwill (sometimes facilitated by a trusted third party) families who do engage in meaningful conversation around these sensitive issues can leave lasting positive legacies, instead of rancour, disharmony and brutal dispute.
For a copy of this year’s Report, please email us at theteam@solomonhollettlawyers.com.au
