Imagine this scenario – you have no inkling that someone is occupying your property – or part of it – and has been for decades. Suddenly you find yourself in the High Court defending the possessor’s claim for transfer of ownership of the property into their name – with not a cent in purchase price payable.

“On what possible basis?” you cry. “Acquisitive prescription” answers the claimant. You’ve never heard of the concept, but you’re about to learn all about it in the most expensive and distressing way. 

Forewarned being forearmed, we’ll tell you what it is and how to guard against it, all with reference to the recent case of a 31-year-old “hidden” nursery and community park.

South Africa has been grey listed by the Financial Action Task Force for not fully complying with international anti-money laundering and terrorism financing standards. That’s led government to bring in a variety of compliance measures, including a new requirement for trustees to disclose the beneficial owners of trusts in a register accessible by the appropriate authorities.

Government’s 1 April deadline for compliance was in practice impossible to meet because it was only gazetted the night before, but all trustees should now urgently take steps to comply. 

To help you do so we discuss the (wide) definition of “beneficial owner” and the penalties risked by trustees who fail to comply, plus we provide a link to the Master of the High Court’s “Trust Beneficial Ownership Register” portal which you need to access to input the data.

Most people when making wills and estate plans will lean toward leaving all or most of their estate to a spouse in one form or another. 

But if things fall apart and divorce looms it is easy in all the stress and hurly burly of the break-up to forget all about your will. Perhaps you are happy to leave things as they are, but it’s far more likely that you will want to amend or replace your will entirely. Either way, you need to act!

We’ll discuss the risks of leaving your will unchanged with reference to a recent Supreme Court of Appeal judgment featuring an ex-wife who committed suicide less than three months after her divorce, her unchanged pre-divorce will in which she had left everything to her husband, and his attempt to have declared unconstitutional a section of the Wills Act that excluded him from inheriting.

“Mutatis mutandis”

You may find the phrase “Mutatis mutandis” in contracts and in legislation. It simply means “subject to the necessary changes” or “with the necessary changes having been made”. In a renewal of lease for example the terms and conditions of the original lease may be incorporated “mutatis mutandis” to indicate that they apply to the renewal, but with any changes necessary in the context of the new agreement. Each case will be different but the thing to remember in practice is that you can’t just refer back to the original document and assume that everything still applies word for word – where changes are necessary, they are automatically incorporated by the “mutatis mutandis” reference.