Find and notify beneficiaries
Part of an executor’s role is to find and contact beneficiaries of a will. Who is a beneficiary, how to find contact details and what information to provide.
Contacting beneficiaries
Beneficiaries are people who are entitled to get money or property from the estate of someone who has died.
Beneficiaries can include:
- people named in the will
- people who are close to the person that has died.
As an executor, part of your role is finding and contacting beneficiaries. This includes those that have been directly named in the will, and immediate family members.
This can be difficult if there are lots of people named in the will, or there are no recent contact details for them.
Some places you might find contact details:
- in personal documents of the person who died (home office, address book)
- phone book look up
- social media or email.
What to provide to beneficiaries
When you are contacting beneficiaries, provide them with information about what has been left to them in the will.
The executor will need to provide financial information at different points throughout administering the estate, particularly if selling assets or distributing property.
Learn more about accounting to the beneficiaries at LawAccess NSW.