Why your family visit as an expat is the perfect time to update your estate plan

EXPAT South Africans who are returning from abroad for the festive period would do well to add estate planning to the list of things to catch up on while home with family for the holidays.

- DAVID THOMSON

Having estate planning discussions face-to-face is a good idea, and recommends making time to talk in between enjoying the South African sunshine and festive fare. There is a court case that happened in the Western Cape High Court, a matter of Anderson and Another v Du Plessis N.O and Others. In 2001, a couple in Germany signed a joint will, pooling ('massing') their South African estates into a single joint estate and naming their children as ultimate heirs. Years later, after the husband had remarried, signed new wills overseas and built up assets in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and South Africa, his death triggered a dispute between his children and his second spouse over which will governed his South African estate.

The court ultimately held that the foreign joint will had to be recognised and enforced in South Africa for the relevant South African assets, despite the later wills, as the 2021 will was executed in compliance with the country in which the testator was domiciled at the time.

One family, many legal systems