Probate Lawyers in Melbourne

Everything is frozen until the court says otherwise

The funeral is over and you are finding out what an executor really inherits first. The bank accounts are locked, the house cannot be sold, and every institution you ring says the same thing: come back with a grant of probate. Platforms holding digital assets in a deceased estate answer much the same way, and a few of them close inactive accounts on a timer while you wait, so tell us early if the deceased held crypto or ran anything online.

Probate is the Supreme Court of Victoria’s confirmation that the will is valid and that you, as executor, have authority to collect the assets, pay the debts and distribute the estate. Where there is no will, the equivalent is letters of administration. Nothing meaningful moves without one, and every week of delay is another week of mortgage payments, insurance premiums and family pressure landing on you.

We take the whole application off your hands. Call 1800 130 120 and we will scope it on the first call, free.

What getting a grant involves

Victoria’s process runs through RedCrest-Probate, the Supreme Court’s online system. You publish a notice of intention to apply, wait at least 14 clear days, then file the application with the original will, a death certificate, and affidavit evidence covering the assets and liabilities of the estate. The Probate Office reviews it and either issues the grant or raises requisitions, which are questions you have to answer before any grant will issue.

Court fees scale with the estate: nothing at all for estates under $250,000, then banded fees rising to just under $18,000 for the very largest estates. Requisitions are where a do-it-yourself application usually gives back whatever it saved. A will that has been stapled and unstapled, a witness nobody can find, a beneficiary who died before the will-maker: each one triggers extra affidavits, and each round trip with the Probate Office adds weeks.

Filed right the first time

You send us the will, the death certificate and a list of assets. We prepare the advertisement, the application and every affidavit, file through the Supreme Court’s online probate system, and answer any requisitions that come back. You get a grant you can take straight to the bank and the land titles office. If there is something wrong with the will, we tell you before filing, while it is still cheap to fix.

Get your grant moving

When a grant application turns into a fight

A grant application looks administrative right up until somebody objects. A caveat lodged against the grant, a second will surfacing, doubts about the will-maker’s capacity, or two family members racing each other to administer the estate will all turn probate into litigation. These fights are heard in the Supreme Court’s probate jurisdiction, and how you handle the first fortnight usually shapes the whole matter.

We act on both sides, for executors pushing through to a grant and for family members with real grounds to stop one. Where your concern is what the will says rather than the grant itself, that is a separate claim with a six-month deadline, covered on our contesting a will page. Full-blown validity fights are covered under estate litigation.

The grant also starts a clock you should know about

The date of the grant matters beyond the paperwork. It starts the six-month window in which an eligible person can bring a family provision claim against the estate. Executors should not distribute early without advice, and anyone thinking about a claim should not wait around. The deadline rules are set out on our contesting a will in Victoria page. An executor who pays the estate out on advice that turns out to be wrong is the one the beneficiaries come after, which is the point at which a professional negligence claim against the adviser is worth examining.

Speak to a probate lawyer today

Call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page and press GET FREE ADVICE. Straightforward or contested, we will tell you what the grant needs and how fast it can realistically be done. If the grant turns out to be the least of your problems, our wills dispute lawyers run the fights that follow it.