Your house, car, savings and debt leave questions behind when you die. Will your family know what accounts you have and where your will is kept? Good estate planning ensures they do not have to guess.
Estate planning concerns ordinary households too. That is the message of the ASISA Foundation's WageWise program in its September 2026 article, "Estate planning in 5 simple steps".
Five steps for estate planning
The first step is to know what you own and what you owe. WageWise recommends that people list their assets and debt, including property, vehicles, bank accounts, investments, retirement savings, policies and loans.
Secondly, you need a valid will. Without a valid will, an estate is divided according to South African intestate succession law. This may differ from what the deceased would have preferred.
Thirdly, beneficiaries on life, funeral and other policies should be reviewed regularly, especially after a marriage, divorce, birth or death. Death benefits from retirement funds follow special rules and are not necessarily divided according to a will or beneficiary designation.
The fourth step is to keep important information together. Your will, policy information, account details and contact persons must be stored safely, and a trusted person should know where they can be found.
Finally, WageWise emphasises that estate planning must be reviewed regularly: when your circumstances change, but also periodically when they do not.
What happens after a death
After a death, estate administration also includes the publication of statutory estate notices. Even a small error in such a notice can delay the process, as Nuusflits recently reported. Legal Notice Publishing help executors and estate administrators to arrange its publication.
The purpose of estate planning is to make the settlement of your affairs easier for the people left behind.
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
