Death is generally treated as a disposal of the deceased person’s assets at market value for CGT purposes, subject to specific exclusions and rollover provisions. This can crystallise gains that accrued while the deceased owned the assets. For the 2027…

Where an executor is appointed, that person is legally authorised to administer the estate and acts in a representative and fiduciary capacity. For an estate administered under section 18(3), a Master’s Representative acts under Letters of Authority instead of an…

Not in the same way that you withdraw money from your own bank account. Money held as trust property must be dealt with by the trustees in accordance with the trust deed and their fiduciary duties. A beneficiary can request…

South African trust law does not prescribe a general maximum number of beneficiaries. A trust can have one beneficiary or many beneficiaries, provided the trust remains legally valid and the beneficiaries are named or objectively determinable from the trust deed.…

The main downside of a trust is that the benefits come with less personal control, more administration and potentially higher tax and professional costs. Once an asset has genuinely been transferred to a trust, it is no longer the founder’s…

A deceased estate is more accurately described as being “reported” rather than registered. Reporting is done by lodging the prescribed information and supporting documents with the Master of the High Court, either through the Department of Justice’s Deceased Estates Online…

South African law gives a person broad freedom of testation, so there is no general rule requiring a will to leave a particular percentage of the estate to specified family members. A testator can ordinarily decide who should inherit and…

There is no single trust that is automatically “best” for holding a house. Where a South African family deliberately chooses trust ownership, a discretionary inter vivos trust is a commonly used structure because it can provide continuity and flexibility in…

South African trust law does not prescribe a general maximum lifespan for an inter vivos trust. A trust can therefore continue for a long period, including across generations, if its trust deed permits this and it continues to have a…

In South Africa, the main formal requirements are set out in section 2 of the Wills Act 7 of 1953. A person must be at least 16 years old to make a will and must be mentally capable of appreciating…