Think about who would get your things if something happened to you tomorrow. The Associated Press reported in 2008 that actor Heath Ledger signed a will on April 12, 2003, leaving everything to his parents and three sisters. Many people in their twenties have no clear answer, and a lot of people who do write a will treat it like a box ticked and forgotten. His daughter was not yet born, and the will never caught up with his life. What followed shows the value of an old piece of paper.
Ledger signed the will about two and a half years before his daughter, Matilda Rose, was born on October 28, 2005, to Ledger and actress Michelle Williams. The document listed assets and cash of just $118,000. Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment in New York City on January 22, 2008, at age 28. In late September 2008, the AP reported, citing Australia’s Sunday Times, that two-year-old Matilda would inherit all of her father’s estate. The estate was thought to be worth over $16.3 million, the paper said, well in excess of the $118,000 in the will, though it was unclear whether that estimate included an expected life insurance payout. Under the Inheritance (Family and Dependants Provision) Act 1972 , as it stood in 2008, a child of the deceased alive at the time of death could apply to the Supreme Court. The act was later amended and renamed the Family Provision Act 1972, so these points describe the law at the time of Ledger’s death.
The will had not been changed after Matilda’s birth, and she was not named in it. There had been suggestions that Williams might make a claim on behalf of her daughter. But Mark Dyson, an Adelaide accountant and one of the executors of the estate, could not reveal Matilda’s share. These accounts point to a family decision rather than a court order or legal fight. Family provision laws differ across Australian states. Ledger was born in Perth, so Western Australia’s law is used here only as an example, and the reports did not say which state’s law would have applied or that any claim was filed. If the court found that the will did not make adequate provision for proper maintenance, support, education, or advancement in life, it could order a lump sum or regular payments. Applications had to be made within six months of the administrator becoming entitled to administer the estate, although a court could allow a late application. Even so, they show that a will leaving out a child is not necessarily the last word.
Ledger’s father, Kim, told the paper there was no claim, saying, “Our family has gifted everything to Matilda.
