What happens to the farm if the will splits everything equally?

Most farm wills I read were written for a family that no longer exists. The kids were at school, nobody knew who'd come home, and splitting everything equally was the obviously fair thing to do.

Then one of them did come home. Twenty years later they've put their working life into the place, and the will still says the farm goes four ways.

The arithmetic

The farm passes to the children as co-owners, or to an executor who has to divide something that doesn't divide well. The child who farms needs the whole operation to make it work. The siblings who left own a share of an asset that pays them nothing, and they're entitled to want its value.

So someone has to find the money. Land makes up most of a typical farm balance sheet, and the cash in the business rarely comes close to paying out even one sibling's share. The usual sources are new debt against the land, which the farming child then services for decades, or selling part of the farm, which can leave what's left too small to run well. Neither tends to happen at a time of anyone's choosing.

If the siblings can't agree, a co-owner in most states can ask a court to order the property sold (I'm not a lawyer, and this is the bit I'd rather a solicitor explained). It's the outcome nobody wrote the will to produce, and it's the one the law leaves open.

Fair and equal

The families who get through this well tend to pull two ideas apart early. Equal means everyone gets the same dollar figure. Fair takes into account who put in twenty years of unpaid weekends, who's already been helped with a house deposit, and who actually wants to farm.

Fair is harder to write down, which is why so many wills default to equal. A will that's fair, and explained to everyone while the parents are alive, is much harder to challenge than one that surprises people at the reading. Family provision claims, where a family member asks a court for more than the will gave them, can be made in every state, and a sibling who feels blindsided is more likely to bring one.

The tools

There's no single fix, but the same few shapes come up again and again.

1. A buy-sell agreement between the siblings, or between the parents and the farming child, that sets the price, the terms, and the timeframe in advance. It turns a future argument into a present negotiation.
2. A testamentary trust, set up by the will, that holds assets for the family rather than handing them out in pieces. It can give the farming child control of the operation while the others keep an interest in the value. Under the draft trust tax rules, a discretionary testamentary trust set up from 1 July 2028 is only excluded from the new 30% minimum tax if every beneficiary is an individual or an exempt entity, so a will that lets the trust pay a family company or another trust needs a second look.
3. Life insurance that pays the off-farm children an equal value in cash, so the land doesn't have to be carved up to create it. The cost rises with the parents' age and cover isn't always available, so it's easier to put in place early.
4. A staged transfer, where the farm moves across over a number of years while the parents are still here to explain their reasons. Everyone gets time to adjust, and the parents get to see it working before it's final.
5. Off-farm wealth built on purpose, so there's something of real value for the children who aren't taking on the land.
6. An investment bond, where there's cash available to fund one. The bond can nominate who receives the proceeds, so on death the money goes straight to the people named rather than through the will, and it's generally paid tax-free. That puts a known sum in the off-farm children's hands without touching the land, although in NSW a court hearing a family provision claim can still reach it. Earnings are taxed inside the bond along the way, and the catch is the obvious one: it needs money off the farm to put in.

Most families end up using two or three of these together. Each carries its own tax and stamp duty questions, and several states offer duty concessions on farmland passing within a family, so the accountant and the solicitor belong in the conversation from the start.

What it means

If your will was written when the children were young, it's worth reading again with the farm in mind. The questions are simple enough, even if the answers aren't: who's going to farm, what do the others get, and where does that money come from?

The documents come last. The conversation between the parents and the children is the actual plan, and the will, the trust, and the agreements are how it gets written down.

Your land. Your legacy. Looked after.