Gifts for Beneficiaries under your Will

Specifying gifts you wish to leave under your Will is optional.

In your Will, you can specify a particular gift, or gifts, you wish to leave behind for a particular beneficiary or beneficiaries.

In doing so, you should ensure that you state each beneficiary’s full legal name in the sections provided for under your Will.

If you do not specify any gifts under your Will, then you will be dealing with all of your estate as a whole.

What happens if you have jointly owned property?

In Australia, it is common to find married couples owning real estate together under a ‘joint tenancy’, as registered on title.

If you own property with your spouse under a joint tenancy, then there will be no need to identify the same property under your Will as a specific gift. This is because your share will automatically pass to your spouse upon your death.

However, if there is no joint tenancy, then the property would be owned under a different legal form of ownership known as a ‘tenancy in common’.

Under a tenancy in common, property such as real estate that you own in joint names with another person will not automatically pass on to the other person upon death, but rather it will pass on to your next of kin. If you own property under a tenancy in common, you can specify your share as a gift to a beneficiary under your Will.