# cost of settling a small will



## clairepiano1 (Jun 27, 2010)

Hi there,
is anyone able to help me find out the cost of settling a small will that was my moms? Total assets are under 50.000 rand. Just don't want to be ripped off and lose all the money in legal fee's. Any and all advise appreciated. thanks Claire


----------



## zambezi.king (Oct 8, 2009)

Hi Claire,

If the total assets are below R120 000 then you can act as executor (sp?) and need not make use of any lawyers etc (this is assuming that you have power of attorney or are executor of the will. If you have the legal right then you can give power of attorney to someone (that you trust) to act locally.

The actual costs to do it yourself is marginal (simple red tape type fees... can't remember off-hand but should be less than a grand or two). The actual pain of the process is getting the death certificate, applying to act as executor (if for Joburg then you have have to go into the centre of Joburg and sit in a corridor / office for hours on end to get the correct permissions approved. You then have to place adds in the local papers for interested parties to the will. Then you have to close out bank accounts, investments etc, etc, etc,etc....

Oh yes... you also have to have many CERTIFIED copies of the will, death certificate, power of attorney, your ID etc... everyone every step of the way is going to want a copy of these docs.

Hope this helps.

My condolences.


----------



## clairepiano1 (Jun 27, 2010)

clairepiano1 said:


> Hi there,
> is anyone able to help me find out the cost of settling a small will that was my moms? Total assets are under 50.000 rand. Just don't want to be ripped off and lose all the money in legal fee's. Any and all advise appreciated. thanks Claire


Thankyou so much for the reply, also thankyou for your kindness, my mom actually died while visiting me in wales, so we have a british death certificate, which should we hope not present too many problems. Have paid repatriation costs as we wanted mom buried at home in vanderbijlpark . Mom had a funeral policy which covered all costs, but we paid for her coffin as it was part of the repatriation costs. Thanks once again for your help, Claire


----------

