What it does
The Administration Act 1903 (WA) is the foundational statute consolidating the grant of probate and letters of administration, the vesting and administration of deceased estates, and the rules governing distribution on intestacy in Western Australia. At its core, the Act confers jurisdiction on the Supreme Court to grant probate of a will or administration of an estate where the deceased left real or personal property in the State (s.6). Upon grant, all real and personal estate vests in the executor or administrator from the date of death (s.8), with real estate vesting subject to any trusts (s.9) and both classes of property constituting assets for payment of debts, duties and legacies in the ordinary course of administration (s.10).
The Act distinguishes testate and intestate estates. Where a will exists, the executor’s rights and duties mirror those historically applicable to personalty but now extend to realty (s.12). On intestacy, the administrator holds the estate on trust for the persons entitled under the statutory order set out in the Table to s.14(1). That Table is the Act’s most distinctive operational feature: it creates a hierarchy commencing with the surviving spouse’s absolute entitlement to household chattels (item 1), followed by a preferential legacy (currently indexed) plus a fractional share of residue when issue survive (item 2), or when parents, siblings or their issue survive but there are no issue (item 3). Subsequent items descend through parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles/aunts and, ultimately, escheat to the Crown (item 11). Distribution among issue or among siblings is per stirpes (ss.14(2b), (3a)), with special equalisation for the single-child case (s.14(3)).
De facto partners are assimilated to spouses where qualifying cohabitation periods are met: two years where there is no spouse (s.15(1)), or two or five years where a spouse also survives, with apportionment of the spouse’s notional entitlement (s.15(2)–(3)). The Fourth Schedule confers on a surviving spouse who is not entitled to the whole estate an election to appropriate the matrimonial home (or the deceased’s interest in it) in or towards satisfaction of their s.14 entitlement, subject to Court approval in complex cases (cll. 2–3) and strict time limits (cl. 3).