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For fiduciary firms, law firms, IFAs & trust companies

One workspace for every estate.

EstateWise runs a deceased estate from the first report to final closure — documents, Master’s Office forms, banking, creditors, the L&D account, distribution — in one workspace, milestone by milestone, with the next step always visible.

And when a client has a Life File, their estate opens ready — not from zero.

Estates / Smith, M.
Estate of the late Michael Smith
EST-2026-0184Opened 2026/02/18Letters of executorship
The statutory routeStep 2 of 3
Appointment & reporting
Administration & compliance
You are here
Distribution & finalisation
The estate workspace: one continuous record, not a dashboard.
The work today

Slow, opaque, and paper-bound.

The average South African deceased estate takes 12 to 24 months to wind up. No single system tracks where each estate sits; documents scatter across email and WhatsApp.

Across ten active estates, most of the unbillable hours aren’t legal work — they’re coordination the firm can’t bill for.

No single source of truth for where each estate stands
One workspace per estate, from reporting to closure
Forms, documents and correspondence scattered across systems
Documents, forms and calculations in one place
No guidance on what must happen next, or in what order
A milestone engine that keeps the next step visible at every stage
Portfolio status invisible — risk surfaces only when it's late
Portfolio visibility across every active case
Without a platform
On EstateWise
What EstateWise is

A professional platform for estate administration — a technology platform, not a law firm in software. It makes a slow, opaque process navigable from end to end.

Calm, precise, professional

Built for professionals running estates side by side. No grief theatre, no authority theatre — just clarity.

Plain English, then the law

Every legal term carries a plain-language label first. Letters of Executorship, Section 29 notices — demystified.

Guides, never acts for you

The system calculates, warns, and points to what's next. The practitioner always makes the decision.

The platform

The whole wind-up, in one workspace.

EstateWise models the full administration as a sequence of milestones — each with its own tasks, documents, forms and deadlines. Small estates on the Letter of Authority path skip the steps that don’t apply.

The statutory route · full administration
Report the death
Get appointed
Gather documents
Register with SARS
Open estate account
Advertise for creditors
LOE only
Inspection period
LOE only
L&D account
LOE only
Transfer property
Distribute & close
Document vault

Stage-grouped requirements that spawn as the estate progresses; view, download, upload.

Master's Office forms

J294, J190, J192 & J243 generated, signed, submitted and tracked to outcome.

Banking

A document checklist and step-by-step guidance for opening the estate account — right instrument, right documents, right order.

Creditors

Section 29 notices in the Gazette and press, with publication dates and deadlines recorded.

Inventory & assets

A running estate inventory that feeds the account and the calculators.

L&D account · LOE path

Beneficiary allocations, distribution statement, and income & expenditure account.

Estate calculators

Estate duty, executor fee and CGT flags — wired and persisted, not spreadsheets.

Distribution & closure

Final distributions, tax clearance, and a data-driven closure checklist per path.

Built for South African estates

Two appointment paths, handled in full.

South African law provides two routes: full administration under Letters of Executorship, and simplified administration under a Letter of Authority for small estates. Confirm the path once and the whole workspace adapts. Small estates are first-class, not a stripped-down afterthought.

LOE
Letters of Executorship
Full administration
LOA
Letter of Authority
Simplified · s18(3)
Threshold
Above R250,000 or immovable property
Small estates
Creditor advertising
Required
Falls away
Inspection period
Required
Falls away
L&D account
Lodged in full
Falls away
Form set & closure checklist
Full pack
Adjusted, simplified pack
For the firm

Oversight across the whole practice.

The owner’s view of the firm — readiness across the client book, will review held by the partner, and a record of who has access.

01Every estate, one portfolio viewSee every active case at a glance — estate state, days open, and a direct link to each workspace.
02Readiness across your client bookMonitor document count, will status and last activity for every connected client — risk visible early, before a death.
03Will review you sign off personallyReview and approve will drafts before clients receive their execution-ready document — the firm's quality gate, built in.
04Team, invitations & settingsInvite clients and colleagues, manage the firm profile, and track who has access.
Built to protect the practitioner

Every decision documented. Every step sequenced.

Fiduciary work carries personal exposure. EstateWise reduces it — not with promises, but with a record and a process that hold up to scrutiny.

§1Audit trail on every actionEvery action in the estate workspace is timestamped and attributed — a defensible record for professional-indemnity purposes, built as you work.
§2Minor beneficiaries, flagged automaticallyWhen a beneficiary is a minor, EstateWise detects it at the point of distribution and surfaces the Guardian's Fund requirement — a compliance check you don't have to remember.
§3Distributions as evidence recordsEach distribution carries a type, date, reference, amount and proof-of-payment file — a record for the Taxing Master, not a checkbox.
§4The Master's correspondence, trackedQueries, rejections and acknowledgements attach to each form, so the back-and-forth with the Master's Office lives with the document.

Institutional knowledge, retained. The sequence lives in the platform, not in one administrator’s head — so expertise doesn’t walk out the door when staff change.

The differentiator

When a client has a Life File, the estate opens ready.

The Life File is EstateWise’s differentiator — not a separate product. Clients build one for free while they’re alive. When a client dies and you report it, their Life File pre-populates the estate case. It doesn’t replace the administration — it removes the cold start.

Life File · free
Prepared while alive
Built by the client, monitored by the firm
Will on record
Identity documents
Insurance & bank details on record
Executor & emergency contacts
death
reported
Estate case
Pre-populated, day one
Identity, will & key documents carried over
Biographical data carried over
Marital regime & will status
Death certificate, ID & will in the estate vault
Surname verified from SA ID

Insurance and bank details are on record for the practitioner to add to the estate inventory. A free benefit for clients · a faster, cleaner intake for the firm · the same platform either way.

Why practitioners trust it

Built on South African law and the Master’s process.

The product respects the regulatory reality at every turn — it earns trust by demonstrating mastery of the process, not by performing authority.

The Master is the gatekeeper

EstateWise never implies you can act before formal appointment. Forms can't be generated until the appointment path and Letter are recorded.

Both appointment paths, first-class

LOA and LOE are handled with equal care — form sets, tasks, notices and closure items branch correctly for simplified and full administration.

Wills are printed and wet-ink signed

The will module produces an execution-ready document. The legal act happens offline — EstateWise never implies a digital signature is valid.

POPIA-aware by design

Consent recorded at sign-up, access controlled per client, a full audit trail on every action, and account deletion built in from day one.