Roughly seven in 10 South Africans have no valid will. National Wills Week gives them five days to change that at no cost.
What far fewer people know is that a will has no authority over a retirement fund and a basic will rarely keeps a child’s inheritance out of the state-run Guardian’s Fund.
It is called a “last” will and testament for a reason. It is an opportunity to set out our wishes about what happens after we are gone. But the true story of a will and its impact on the people we love begins only after the final word has been written.
Drafting a will requires us to imagine a world without us in it. That is difficult. Instead of thinking about who should inherit the family home, whether we have made sufficient provision for our children’s education, who should administer our estate or how to deal with second marriages and blended families, we tell ourselves that we will deal with it later. There is rarely a perfect moment to confront our own mortality. So, we postpone it.
The irony is that writing a will is rarely about how much money you have. Avoiding it is not necessarily about a lack of financial literacy. It is simply human nature to avoid thinking about something unpleasant. The more reassuring way to look at it is that a will is about the very people we love and are trying to protect, in a future where we are no longer there to make those decisions ourselves.
Understanding the value of a will and the opportunity to act
Although a will cannot prevent grief or make losing a parent or partner easier, it can remove some of the uncertainty and decision-making that families face at the moment when they are dealing with emotional loss.
National Wills Week, which runs from 14 to 18 September 2026, provides another opportunity to act. The annual Law Society of South Africa initiative encourages members of the public to draft or update a basic will, with participating legal practitioners offering the service free of charge. This year the profession has been challenged to draft 10 000 basic wills in a week.
At Worth, we talk about the difference between knowing something and doing something about it. Education is not a standalone intervention. It is the first step in a process in which people put what they have learnt into practice and begin making different decisions.
Estate planning belongs in that process. Discovery Bank and Worth have partnered to give clients access, starting this Wills Week, to courses built around positive financial-behaviour change, among them drafting a valid will.
The cost of dying without a plan
The Law Society of South Africa points out that if someone dies without a valid will, their assets are distributed under the Intestate Succession Act. Those who assume their spouse or partner will inherit everything are usually wrong.
The provisions of the Act are generally fair and ensure that possessions are transferred to the spouse and children and, where applicable, to extended family members. The problem is that a legal formula might not reflect what you would have chosen yourself. The Sanlam Legacy 2026 Survey found that only 28% of respondents have a valid will, which means that in most South African families it is the formula, rather than a personal decision, doing the work.
Where a child’s inheritance goes when there is no will
There is a practical consequence here that few people know about until it happens to them. Children under 18 cannot legally manage an inheritance, so where a parent dies without a will or with a will that makes no provision for minor children, the money may be paid into the Guardian’s Fund. The fund is administered by the Master of the High Court and holds the money until the child turns 18.
The Guardian’s Fund’s latest annual report shows it was holding R18.8 billion on behalf of beneficiaries at 31 March 2025, on a balance sheet of R22.3 billion. Where money stays unclaimed for 30 years from the date a person became entitled to it, it is forfeited to the state. Every year, the Master publishes a list of unclaimed monies in the Government Gazette, and does so in September, the same month the country is being encouraged to write its wills.
A will gives a parent another route. It can establish a testamentary trust, name the people who will manage it and set out how the money should be used for school fees, care and daily living. One caveat: a basic will drafted free of charge does not usually include a testamentary trust, so it is a conversation to raise with a legal or financial adviser.
The asset your will cannot touch
For most working South Africans, the largest asset they own is their retirement savings. It is also the one asset a will has no authority over.
Under section 37C of the Pension Funds Act, a retirement fund death benefit does not form part of the deceased’s estate. It is not distributed according to a will and it is not automatically paid to the people named on a beneficiary nomination form. The trustees of the fund must identify the member’s dependants and nominees and then allocate the benefit in a manner they consider equitable. A nomination form guides the trustees but it does not bind them. The Constitutional Court handed down a judgment in August 2025 clarifying how “dependency” is to be interpreted in that process and the Supreme Court of Appeal built on it in May 2026.
Knowing this makes a will more useful. A will and a beneficiary nomination do two different jobs and neither one substitutes for the other, which means someone can leave a carefully drafted will and still leave their family in a position they never intended.
People assume that once the will is signed, the planning is finished. In practice, the will is one document among several and the parts that carry the most money are often the parts people have never looked at. Knowing that changes what you do next.
Women can be particularly exposed
Then there is the gender dimension. Statistics South Africa’s 2026 mid-year population estimates show that women in South Africa live longer than men, with life expectancy at birth of 71.0 years compared with 65.5 years for men. This means women are more likely to find themselves managing the practical consequences of a partner’s death.
The South African Women Lawyers Association has highlighted the vulnerability of women and children when a husband dies without a will. Women are often deeply involved in the practical financial workings of a household, paying school fees and other expenses, managing budgets and taking responsibility for family needs. Yet without a valid will, they can be left without the authority or the resources they need at the moment their family needs them most.
Having a will is different from having a current will
Another form of avoidance deserves attention: assuming that because you wrote a will once, the job is done.
Having a will is crucial but it must also reflect your current circumstances. Life changes. People get married or divorce or start a business. Children grow up and become financially independent. Parents die and grandchildren arrive. Assets grow or disappear. A will is a snapshot of your wishes at a particular point in your life and one that reflected your life 10 years ago may no longer do so today. The same applies to the beneficiary nomination forms sitting with your retirement fund and your insurer.
National Wills Week is the opportune time to revisit all of them.
Make the decision, then act
The first step is not necessarily complicated. It is understanding why a valid will matters and then turning that knowledge into action.
We spend a lifetime trying to build financial security for our families. We save, buy homes, put money aside for our children’s education and insure our lives. A will belongs in the same conversation. It cannot make death easier, but it can make the practical consequences of our absence clearer for the people we love.
A will is not planning for death. It is planning for the people who will have to carry on without us.
Hayley Parry is the chief education officer at Worth, an independent financial education provider focused on interventions that support financial behaviour change