The courts recently caused significant uncertainty and anxiety regarding trustee decision-making. Since 2023, they have fluctuated between requiring all trustees to approve and sign trustee resolutions for transactions with third parties and recognising that a trust...

Trustees should move now to avoid administrative penalties. While the South African Revenue Service (SARS) has gradually introduced administrative penalties for late or non-submission of tax returns, starting with individuals and later extending to companies, trustees...

Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi experienced first-hand some of the challenges faced in gaining access to court and other legal services, when, along with Deputy Minister Andries Nel and DG Doctor Mashabane, she visited the Johannesburg Master’s Office and the...

Facing an appeal by a father against a lower court order that his two sons’ grandmother may have contact with them, Eastern Cape High Court (Makanda) Judge JW Eksteen remarked that ‘grandparents, like heroes, are as necessary to a child’s growth as vitamins.’ The Star...

Jun 1, 2024 MANY trustees are advised to distribute all trust income and capital gains to beneficiaries to escape the high tax rates in trusts. Even though a trust carries the highest income tax rate (a flat rate of 45%) and capital gains tax rate (a flat rate of...

SARS ‘s Trust and Tax Compliance webinar educates trustees   On 29 February 2024, the South African Revenue Service (“SARS”) conducted a “Trust and Tax Compliance” webinar where they discussed the 4 pillars of compliance as they relate to trusts - registration,...

To maintain a lavish lifestyle or not was the question the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) had to decide. A Pretoria News reports says a wife, who is divorcing her husband, wanted more than R127 000 maintenance a month for herself pending the divorce, as she said...

Lawyers say the Master's Office is causing months, even years-long, delays for crucial legal administrative procedures that should take weeks. The Master's Office oversees numerous legal processes, such as winding-up estates of the deceased and bankruptcy and...

The Western Cape High Court has ruled that there was insufficient evidence to show that a man who died in hospital from Covid-19 had intended to revoke his will and write up a new one in which he left everything to a farming trust instead of his three children. A Cape...