Estate planning sounds like something for people with estates. In practice it covers the two things that can happen to any adult: you may lose the ability to make your own decisions, and you will eventually die. South Australia deals with those through three separate documents, and each does something the other two cannot.
The order matters more than people expect. A will does nothing while you are alive. A power of attorney and an advance care directive do nothing once you have died. Leave any one of them out and there is a gap — and the gaps are only ever discovered at the worst possible moment.
The three documents, and where each one stops
| Document | Covers | Operates |
|---|---|---|
| Will | Who receives your assets, who administers your estate, guardians for minor children, any trusts you want to create | After death |
| Enduring power of attorney | Financial and property decisions — banking, bills, dealing with or selling property, tax | While you are alive, and continues if you lose capacity |
| Advance care directive | Health care, where you live, and personal matters, plus who speaks for you | While you are alive, when you cannot decide for yourself |
A point specific to South Australia is worth pausing on, because it is where most confusion sits. An enduring power of attorney here covers financial and property matters only. It gives your attorney no say at all in your medical treatment or your accommodation. Those decisions belong to the advance care directive, introduced by the Advance Care Directives Act 2013 (SA), which replaced the older enduring power of guardianship and medical power of attorney. If you were given a set of documents before 2014 and have not looked at them since, that is worth checking.
What happens without them
Without a will, your estate is distributed by a statutory formula rather than by your choice — a fixed order of spouse, children, parents and siblings that takes no account of a blended family, a partner you never married, a stepchild you raised, or anyone you wanted to look after. We have set out exactly how that formula works in what happens if you die without a will in South Australia. There is also no executor of your choosing, and no ability to appoint guardians for children who are still minors.
Without an enduring power of attorney, nobody can lawfully operate your accounts or deal with your property once you cannot do so yourself. Not your spouse, not your adult children. Somebody has to apply to the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for an administration order, which takes time, costs money, and may result in a person or body being appointed who is not the person you would have chosen. All of this happens while the mortgage still needs paying.
Without an advance care directive, decisions about your treatment and where you live fall to a statutory list of default decision-makers, or to SACAT if there is disagreement — and family disagreement in that situation is common precisely because nobody knows what you would have wanted.
The timing point underneath all three is the one that matters most: these documents can only be made while you still have capacity. Once capacity is lost, the option is gone, and what is left is an application to a tribunal.
Why the cheap version is often the expensive one
Will kits and online templates are not invalid as such. What they lack is anyone asking the questions that determine whether the document does what you intend. The failures we see fall into a short and repetitive list:
- Execution errors. A will must be signed in the presence of two witnesses who are both present at the same time. The Court can sometimes rescue a defective document, but only through a separate application supported by affidavit evidence — which costs the estate many times what the will did.
- Assets the will never controlled. Superannuation is not automatically an estate asset, property held as joint tenants passes by survivorship, and assets in a family trust or company are not yours to leave. A will that gives everything to the children while the house and the super pass elsewhere achieves the opposite of what was intended.
- Gifts that fail. A specific gift of an asset that has since been sold simply lapses. A beneficiary who dies first can send a share back into intestacy. A gift described loosely enough to argue about will be argued about.
- Blended families handled bluntly. Splitting everything equally, or leaving everything to a second spouse and trusting the children will be looked after, are the two most reliable ways to produce a claim against the estate.
- No thought given to contest risk. The Succession Act 2023 (SA) requires the Court to weigh the will-maker's wishes and reasons. Those reasons need to be recorded properly at the time — which is something a template cannot do and a file note can.
- Capacity left undocumented. Where a will is later challenged on capacity grounds, the contemporaneous notes of the lawyer who took instructions are frequently the evidence the whole dispute turns on.
Our note on five things your will must do covers what a properly drawn will should achieve beyond naming beneficiaries.
What a lawyer adds beyond the drafting
- Working out what is actually in your estate before drafting anything — including superannuation nominations and how titles are held, which frequently changes the plan.
- Structuring where it is warranted: a testamentary trust for a young, vulnerable or at-risk beneficiary, a right to reside for a surviving partner, or protective arrangements where a beneficiary receives a pension or is in business.
- Getting the interlocking documents consistent, so the will, the super nomination, any business succession arrangements and the power of attorney all say the same thing.
- Registration where it is needed. In South Australia a power of attorney generally must be registered with Land Services SA before your attorney can sign documents dealing with land — an unwelcome discovery three days out from a settlement.
- Safe custody of the signed originals, and a record of where they are. A photocopy of a will is not the same thing as a will.
- Reviewing after life events, which is where most plans quietly fall out of date.
When to review what you have
Two events change your will automatically. Marrying, or registering a relationship, revokes an earlier will unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage or relationship. Divorce, or revoking a registered relationship, cancels gifts to the former partner and their appointment as executor. Beyond those, a review is warranted when you separate, have a child or grandchild, buy or sell property, start or sell a business, receive an inheritance, when an executor or beneficiary dies or moves overseas, or when a beneficiary's circumstances change in a way that makes an outright gift unwise.
As a general rule, if it has been more than about five years since anyone read your documents, they are worth reading.
How Zed Legal can help
We prepare wills, enduring powers of attorney and advance care directives for clients throughout South Australia, usually as a single set at a fixed, quoted fee, and we hold the signed originals in safe custody at no charge. Where an estate later needs to be administered we can act for the executor as well, which is where the quality of the original drafting shows.
Most people find the appointment shorter and less daunting than they expected. Call (08) 8166 7569 or email hello@zed.legal to arrange one.
This article is general information only and was last reviewed in August 2026. It is not legal advice and does not take your circumstances into account. Please obtain advice specific to your situation before making or changing any of these documents.