At the heart of your estate planning is your will (“Last Will and Testament”). Without it, you lose your right to choose your heirs, to choose the executor of your estate, and to choose who will look after your children and your family trusts when you die. But there’s lots of online chatter about other types of “will” such as offshore wills, digital wills, business wills, ethical wills and living wills. What are they and do you really need to put them all in place...

When a sale falls through, most people assume restitution means simply giving back the money and the property. A recent High Court decision shows it is rarely that straightforward, particularly if the property itself has changed in the interim.  The ruling explains how restoration costs should be worked out, and why the condition of the property when occupation begins can matter years later.When a trust's founder dies, families often assume that whatever they said they wanted will be hono...

A tenant may be in clear breach of a lease, but that does not guarantee a successful eviction.  A recent High Court judgment shows how an unclear cancellation notice and a failure to follow the correct legal process can derail an otherwise strong case, leaving landlords with an expensive lesson in the importance of getting the basics right.A dementia diagnosis affects far more than memory. As mental capacity declines, families are often confronted with difficult legal and financial decisi...

A deck collapsed seven months after transfer. The buyers, convinced they’d been sold a raw prawn, headed to the courts. Eight claims and twelve years later, they haven’t recouped a cent. A 2026 Western Cape High Court judgment draws a sharp line between what the law protects buyers against and what it does not.We all know that a comprehensive estate plan, with a carefully crafted will at its heart, is essential to ensure that we’re on track to leave our loved ones financially...

The administrators of residential complexes tread a fine line. They must implement and enforce conduct rules for the good of the complex as a whole, but without unjustly impinging on the constitutional rights of individuals.  A recent Supreme Court of Appeal decision, granting a sight-impaired owner a limited right to exclusive use of a section of common area for his washing machine, has brought this balancing act into sharp focus. We discuss the reasoning behind that outcome, with some s...