More Australians aren’t having children. What happens to their wills?

“I really love the idea that we’re heading to a time when there might be zero deaths from breast cancer. It’s one of the real passion areas that I have, given the impact on my family.”

‘What is my place here?’

Megan Barrow always wanted to be a mother, but parenthood just wasn’t on the cards for her. The 53-year-old marketing consultant from Melbourne suffered a nervous breakdown in her early 20s, which triggered years spent in the grip of agoraphobia and poor mental health.

Barrow says this forced her to navigate the grief of childlessness while considering what a life without children means for her.

“People’s legacy is meant to be their children … I don’t have that innate legacy to leave the world. So what is my place here?” she says.

The idea of offspring as bearers of our legacy has quite the stronghold on our cultural imagination.

Patrick Stokes, a philosopher and associate professor at Deakin University, says this notion is a relic from a time when family title mattered most.

It’s a very human desire to want to live on in some form after we pass.

“We don’t want to think that death will simply obliterate whatever we were in the world or that our life will turn out not to have had any kind of significance,” he says.

Stokes says it can be helpful to think about our collective, rather than individual, legacy too.

“It may be that, in fact, your legacy was part of a larger effort to change social structures, or [your legacy] may have been part of the era in which you lived and the way in which your era responded to things.”

Barrow has found a way to leave her mark through community work, using her lived experience with suicide and mental ill-health to help others. She volunteers as an ambassador and speaker with charities Beyond Blue and R U OK?

“What will people say, and will I have mattered in the world? That’s what I’m working towards,” she says.

Already, she’s seen this work make a difference.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘I was about to give up and your story has given me hope’.”

Barrow plans to leave most of her estate to her siblings and her three young nieces.

Plan early

Planning early is key to a smooth transition of funds. More Australians are now including charitable donations in their wills, with a report from Fundraising & Philanthropy finding the number of charitable gifts in wills tripled between 2020 and 2023.

If you don’t have children to inherit, Art of Estate Planning director Tara Lucke says it can be helpful to talk to an estate lawyer.

“Many people think their will is their estate plan, but there’s the power-of-attorney regime, which applies even if you’re still alive but can’t look after yourself, and superannuation.”

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Michael Tiyce, principal at family law specialists Tiyce and Lawyers in Sydney, says an estate lawyer can help to guide you on charitable options. Animal charities are popular with his clients, as well as religious organisations and political parties.

It’s worth keeping in mind that superannuation is not automatically included in a will, Lucke says.

Spouses can be nominated to receive your superannuation directly, but other beneficiaries such as nieces or nephews cannot.

If you want to gift your super to someone other than a spouse, you will need to nominate a legal representative (in other words, your will or estate) with your fund, and use your will to give your super.

If you want to include minors in your will, Lucke recommends setting up a testamentary trust.

While 12 million Australians do not have a will, Tiyce says it’s a good idea to start one early.

He recommends that people revisit their will every five years, and again after major milestones such as marriage.

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