{"id":9953,"date":"2026-06-30T22:36:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T22:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=9953"},"modified":"2026-06-30T22:36:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T22:36:57","slug":"the-costly-consequences-of-dying-without-a-valid-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=9953","title":{"rendered":"The costly consequences of dying without a valid will"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/iframe.iono.fm\/e\/1690995?layout=modern\" width=\"100%\" height=\"170\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>J<\/strong><strong>EREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Estate planning is one of those financial decisions I think that many people delay, often until it is too late. Now, Discovery Life says up to 70% of South Africans die without a valid will, and that obviously leaves families exposed to delays, costs and disputes at an already difficult time.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the company has enhanced its wills and trust services and Estate Preserver offering, and is also using its Own What\u2019s Yours podcast to help South Africans understand the practical steps involved in protecting their assets and loved ones.<\/p>\n<p>So let\u2019s put this all on the table. I\u2019m in conversation now with Harry Joffe, who\u2019s head of legal services at Discovery Life. Harry, a warm welcome to you. Let me start with the obvious one. Why do you think so many South Africans still don\u2019t have a valid will? It runs against conventional wisdom, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>I think the thing is, Jeremy, no one wants to actually address the issue that you might not be here and you\u2019ve got to think of who gets what.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s fascinating, it\u2019s not just a certain strata of people who don\u2019t have wills. It goes across the board.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I was sitting with a company director the other day, and he\u2019s got four kids, and sadly, only the first two have made it into the will, and the bottom two haven\u2019t quite made it in yet.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s just what happens to everyone, no one wants to actually address this issue of your end.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>I\u2019m glad you mentioned that you were in conversation with a company director because often, and I think this is a fallacy, people think it\u2019s only something for wealthy people. But the reality is that anyone with assets and dependants needs to be thinking about the subject, and sooner rather than later, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>Exactly, Jeremy. We often have younger people coming to us and saying, well, my house is totally bonded. My car is owned by the bank. Why do I need a will?<\/p>\n<p>Then we say, well, you\u2019ve got a couple of minor kids \u2013 who\u2019s going to look after them if you pass away with your spouse? Do you have a trust for them to look after assets that are bequeathed to them?<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Everyone has got some kind of assets that need looking after when they pass.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Even if you aren\u2019t with a spouse and you don\u2019t have children, well, surely you want whatever you\u2019ve got to go to the people you want to choose and not have the [Intestate Succession] Act decide who gets what. So it\u2019s just a question of controlling your assets after you pass.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Harry, do you think the biggest misconception then that people have about estate planning is not realising, in fact, that however big or however small, they are still in possession of assets?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>I think it\u2019s that, Jeremy, and I think it\u2019s not understanding the consequences of passing away without a valid will.<\/p>\n<p>If you pass without a valid will, then the Intestate Succession Act kicks in and it just creates a pecking order of who gets what, and you might find your brother, who you don\u2019t speak to, ends up with all your assets, which might not be what you want, or you might find, if you don\u2019t have siblings, that your nearest blood relative gets things, and people just don\u2019t realise that.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you are single and you\u2019ve got no dependants, you might want to leave assets to a charity. You\u2019ve got certain requirements. We\u2019ve even got clients who want to leave assets to their pets, and to do that, you obviously need a trust to look after the assets for the pets.<\/p>\n<p>So everyone\u2019s got assets they want to bequeath to people, and you want to be in control of exactly who gets what.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Harry, what is the most common mistake, do you think, that can make a will invalid or difficult to enforce?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>Good question, Jeremy. There are so many errors that we get. The first thing we get is the wills aren\u2019t signed correctly or they aren\u2019t witnessed correctly.<\/p>\n<p>The Wills Act is very, very specific, very old-fashioned and very bitty on what makes it valid. So a will has to be on paper, signed in what we call wet ink.<\/p>\n<p>No digital signatures and no digitally stored wills. It\u2019s got to be an original on paper in wet ink. It\u2019s got to have two witnesses who sign in the presence of the testator.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are plenty of court cases, even now, where wills come to court not signed correctly, not witnessed correctly, and those wills are invalid. That to us is the biggest mistake.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We have so many of our clients, when they send the wills back to us to store, we actually check their signatures and we check the witnesses. Probably 10% of our clients who send wills to us to check and to store, we\u2019ve got to send the will back to be signed correctly.<\/p>\n<p>So that to me is the biggest issue. Clients don\u2019t understand the technicalities of the Wills Act.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Harry, tell me, how often should someone review or update their will?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>Oh, that\u2019s a good question, Jeremy. We have a couple of these old grandparents who want to change their will every few months whenever they have a fallout with their children or their grandchildren. That\u2019s probably going overboard.<\/p>\n<p>But we do like to say to clients that whenever there\u2019s a major life-changing event that they go through, they get married, they get divorced, they have children, they have grandchildren, they change properties in which they live, things like that, any major life-changing event, they should update their will.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Harry, I understand your argument about the signature in ink, but the world has also moved on. And do people, do you think, need to start approaching newer assets like cryptocurrency, online accounts and digital records in a different way?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>Yeah, that\u2019s another very pertinent question, Jeremy, because obviously with crypto there\u2019s passwords and there are keys and all of those things, and it\u2019s quite a challenge for people to try and work out the most optimal way to get these passwords to their heirs.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Obviously, they need to say in the will that they\u2019ve got crypto so the heirs know that there is crypto, but you\u2019re not going to put a password in the will.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So you\u2019ve got to find an appropriate way to pass the password on.<\/p>\n<p>I had one client recently who\u2019s got two kids who don\u2019t speak to each other. He said to me what he\u2019s going to do is leave each kid half the password. So when he passes away, they\u2019re going to have to speak to each other to access his crypto. That\u2019s just an anecdote. It\u2019s not a simple thing to get passwords to your heirs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>That\u2019s almost reconciliation from the grave. It\u2019s very interesting. Harry, final question then. Discovery\u2019s enhanced wills and trust services and Estate Preserver, what are you offering that is aiming to simplify this often, as you\u2019ve outlined to me, very, very complex process?<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY JOFFE: <\/strong>Yes. We\u2019ve got different routes where the bulk of our clients, who\u2019ve got simple wills and simple needs and simple estates, can go to testamentary specialists who draft it via the system and get the will to them quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve got clients with more complicated needs, offshore assets, crypto, things like usufruct, more complicated assets, more complicated lives, we can refer them to a bespoke will offering through a bespoke law firm that we\u2019ve linked up to, and that\u2019s a journey.<\/p>\n<p>But either way, we\u2019ve got this product called the Estate Preserver, which indemnifies the most expensive costs around dying. So your executor\u2019s fees, your testamentary trustee fees to create a testamentary trust, and your conveyancing fees are normally a big drain on an estate\u2019s liquidity.<\/p>\n<p>This product aims to indemnify our clients for those costs. There\u2019s a whole formula, a whole method we use to work out the costs, and that\u2019s how the Estate Preserver works.<\/p>\n<p>It means clients know they can get a professional executor, a professional trustee, obviously a professional law firm, to do the conveyancing, and those costs, which are quite expensive, are indemnified by the product.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Harry Joffe, thank you very much indeed, head of legal services at Discovery Life. Learn more on Discovery\u2019s Own What\u2019s Yours podcast today online.<\/p>\n<p><em>Brought to you by Discovery Life.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Moneyweb does not endorse any product or service being advertised in sponsored articles on our platform.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>#costly #consequences #dying #valid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. JEREMY MAGGS: Estate planning is one of those financial decisions I think that many people delay, often until it is&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9994,4673,11828,11829],"class_list":["post-9953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-consequences","tag-costly","tag-dying","tag-valid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}