Compliance for estates
The compliance load on a wills and estates practice has grown sharply — anti-money-laundering, identity verification, trust handling, retention, privacy and cyber all now sit on the ordinary estate file. We run the compliance work behind your firm so every matter stands up to scrutiny, while your practitioners keep responsibility for the legal judgement.
Why it matters now
From 1 July 2026, Australian legal practitioners are reporting entities under the reformed Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act. Firms offering ‘designated services’, which many estates matters involve, have core obligations — an AML/CTF program, customer due diligence, ongoing monitoring and reporting.
Estate administration is squarely in scope: taking instructions, handling estate funds, dealing with real property and assisting with the transfer of assets are exactly the activities the regime is built around. Most small firms have neither the time nor a dedicated compliance officer to stand this up. We do the standing-up and the day-to-day, mapped to your firm's obligations.
This is where Estates Back Office and JurisIT's compliance practice meet: JurisIT builds the firm-wide compliance and AI-governance framework; we apply it, file by file, to your estates work.
We prepare, check and maintain the compliance record. Your firm remains the reporting entity and retains every professional and statutory obligation. We support the work; we do not assume your firm's legal or regulatory responsibility.
What we cover
Draw on the whole program, or just the pieces you need help with.
Enrolment support, a compliant AML/CTF program tailored to your estates services, risk assessment, and the customer due diligence and monitoring workflow to run it on every matter.
Executor, administrator and beneficiary identity checks to the required standard, with certified-copy handling and a clean, retained evidence trail on file.
Structured reviews against an estates file checklist — surfacing missing steps, documents and authorities before they become requisitions, negligence exposure or an audit finding.
Support for the correct receipting, recording and reconciliation of estate money, aligned to your trust-accounting obligations and your Clio trust ledger.
A defensible retention schedule for wills, deeds and closed estate files, with controlled, evidenced destruction of records that are properly beyond their retention period.
Handling of the sensitive personal and financial information an estate involves in line with the Privacy Act and your firm's obligations — secure portals, access control and minimal retention.
Practical Essential Eight-aligned hardening of the systems that hold estate data. Firm-wide uplift is delivered with JurisIT's cybersecurity practice.
A compliant, auditable safe-custody register — indexed, reconciled and access-controlled — so you can always evidence what original documents you hold and where.
Checklists and process support for conflict checks, testamentary-capacity file notes and the recognition of elder financial abuse indicators — the safeguards regulators and courts expect to see.
Estates Back Office provides administrative and process support. It does not provide legal, accounting or compliance advice, and does not act as your firm's AML/CTF compliance officer. Your firm remains the reporting entity and retains responsibility for meeting its obligations.
Tell us where your estates practice sits today and we'll map the gap to close.