In Western Australia, that default distribution is sourced from s.14 of the Administration Act 1903. The precise formula for the default distribution varies according to the size of the estate and categories of surviving relatives.

It often includes a ‘statutory legacy’ component. The statutory legacies are specific amounts payable to certain surviving relatives, such as a spouse or parents of the deceased. The amounts of those legacies were last updated in 1982, with the figures very much representing that outdated economic context.

Administration Amendment Act 2022

For the first time in almost 40 years, the statutory legacies have been modified, via the operation of the Administration Amendment Act 2022. The new regime applies to estates where the person died on or after 30 March 2022 only. In practice, this means that the distribution of an intestate estate will look very different for deaths on either side of that date. For example, a surviving spouse is now entitled to (at least) the first AUD472,000 of the estate rather than the AUD50,000 that has historically been their legacy.[1]

A further example is that parents have had their statutory legacy increased from AUD6,000 to AUD56,500,[2] which is shared equally between the two parents if both are surviving. In doing so, the Parliament of Western Australia has recognised that: