Legal Articles and Guides

Justice & Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola is confident the backlog in the Master’s Office – which accumulated during the Covid-19 pandemic and as a result of a September 2021 cyberattack – will be cleared by the end of December 2022.

Lawyers who are attempting to register special trusts for minors and incapacitated beneficiaries of medical negligence and Road Accident Fund awards are at their wits end as the Master of the High Court is apparently still refusing to register these trusts.

A tanker loaded with 2m barrels of Russian oil is steaming towards a storage facility in SA amid mounting international pressure to boycott Russian exports.

Your will will always be the keystone of your estate planning, and a recent High Court decision sounds yet another warning to beware the “do your own will” concept. By not having his will drawn by a professional, a father inadvertently caused one of his children to be disqualified from inheriting her intended share, whilst her husband was disqualified from being appointed as executor.

When the Intestate Succession Act was enacted in 1987, it provided for surviving spouses to inherit from the deceased’s estate if their spouse had passed away without a will.

As former President Nelson Mandela’s family fights to stop the sale of some of his most prized possessions from his home in Houghton, the trust responsible for protecting his artefacts has allegedly distanced itself from the furore.

In the apartheid era, a huge portion of the population was denied property rights in terms of the Black Land Act, the Group Areas Act and the Black Administration Act.

Master of the High Court (Johannesburg) Martin Mafojane has apologised for the ‘regrettable inconvenience’ caused by the recent data breach at the Justice Department, with many saying that the security lapse was just the latest in a long history of poor service, reports EWN.

Amazingly, here we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic yet still some 70% – 80% of working South Africans are said to have no will in place.

Feuds regarding the right to bury a deceased person have the potential to permanently divide a family.

Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi called a public meeting in Ulundi this week to convey the firm message that, with or without the government's coronation and other due processes, King Misuzulu is already on the throne as leader of the Zulu nation.

The East London Yazbek family has settled their legal battle over family patriarch Mark Yazbek’s will – agreeing to give younger son Luke Yazbek (45) a settlement of R3.5m.

The Constitutional Court has ruled that a trust created by a donor for the benefit of his children and their descendants unfairly discriminated against children adopted by one of his daughters as it did not include them, notes a TimesLIVE report.

A father’s renewed bid to share in the R15m left behind by his late son whom he had not seen since the child was six months old has been turned down by the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria), says a Pretoria News report.

The administration of estates have virtually ground to a halt due to inefficiencies at the Master’s offices and the failure of the Government Printing Works to publish a legal notices gazette for four weeks, reports Rapport.