Barry Botha Breytenbach

Life partners now qualify for intestate succession

The Constitutional Court recently confirmed the October 2020 ruling of the Western Cape High Court that section 1(1) of the Intestate Succession Act is unconstitutional in so far as it excludes life partners in a relationship intended to be permanent, as per the definition of “spouse”. The Court ordered parliament to amend two laws to […]

Why an estate plan is crucial

We’ve all seen it in movies and novels: A young unsuspecting person wakes up one day to find out that they had been left an extraordinarily large estate from a distant relative that they hardly knew existed. We chalk it up to an absurdity. Something like that would never happen in real life, would it? […]