This post is about practical things we need to attend to after losing our loved one. It may be a bit off the main topic, but I just wanted to post my experience in case it may help anyone else on this subject as I did not find this type of info here myself when I was faced with these questions. This is just my personal experience, not a guide, and it may happen differently for others but I thought sharing it may be helpful.
My wife was in her final stages of cancer and did not have a will and at the time I tried to get advice if I should try to address that in those final days. In the end she passed away without a will (intestate). Just being able to keep functioning on those days was all I could manage. I was not able to think about a will.
In my mind our situation was not complex as we were legally married, no prior marriages, do not have children, so I wasnt sure if a will would make any difference. Whenever I asked around to legal advisers, lawyers, accountants, everyone stayed away of advising and did not give me any useful information. It felt like they feared that any information given with the slightest inaccuracy would cause them trouble.
In the end, not having a will did not cause any problems, in my case. I am in NSW.
Initially, after some research on google, I understood I would need to apply for a "Letter of Administration" to be able to manage her estate. Instead of going through one of the multiple companies that offer this service, since I wasnt sure if the letter was really needed, I decided to apply myself via the NSW supreme court website. The process is not simple for a layman, and I made some mistakes and was asked to amend my application a few times, but I managed to obtain the letter after a few months.
All bureaucratic affairs of finalizing the estate were dealt with without the letter of administration. Things like insurance payments, mortgage, closing bank accounts and withdrawing superannuation balances did not require the letter of administration.
The only place that was asking me to provide such a letter was lodging a final tax return with the ATO when I tried to lodge that return myself. But then, I changed to using a tax agent to log the return on my behalf and the return was lodged without requiring the letter of administration.
In the end I obtained the letter but did not encounter a situation where it was needed.
