Estate planning is one of those things we know we should get around to, but somehow never feels urgent. It is uncomfortable to think about, easy to put off, and often seen as something to deal with later in life. The reality is that estate planning mistakes typically don’t announce themselves while you’re alive. They only become apparent once you’re gone, at the same time that your family can least afford to discover them.
The good news is that most of the mistakes that derail an estate are entirely predictable and – with the right planning – entirely avoidable. Here are the ones we see most often.
Mistake 1: Not having a valid, up to date Will
This is the most obvious gap and still one of the most common. Without a valid Will, your estate is distributed according to South Africa’s laws of intestate succession, a fixed formula that may bear little resemblance to what you’d actually have wanted. Long-term partners who were never married can be excluded entirely. Stepchildren who weren’t formally adopted often receive nothing. And the process typically takes considerably longer, since the court must first appoint an executor rather than one already being named.
An outdated Will can cause many of the same problems as no Will at all. Marriage, divorce, remarriage, the birth of children or a change in financial circumstances can all leave an old Will misaligned with your current wishes – yet it remains legally valid until you update it.
Mistake 2: Underestimating the cost of winding up an estate
Many people plan around the value of what they’ll leave behind, without accounting for what it actually costs to transfer that value to their heirs, or for the liabilities the estate itself Will need to settle. Executor’s fees, conveyancing costs, valuations and other administration expenses can add up to a meaningful percentage of an estate’s value – and these costs need to be paid before your beneficiaries see a cent. On top of this, outstanding debts such as a home loan, vehicle finance, or personal loans don’t simply disappear on death; they need to be settled from the estate before anything can be distributed. Without planning for this, families are often forced to sell assets, sometimes at a loss or under time pressure, simply to cover what the estate owes.
Mistake 3: Forgetting about death taxes
Estate duty and capital gains tax (CGT) are two of the most underestimated threats to an inheritance. Many people assume these taxes are either negligible or somebody else’s problem to figure out later. In reality, death triggers a deemed disposal of assets for CGT purposes, and estate duty can apply once an estate exceeds the abatement threshold. Without planning for these taxes in advance, SARS’s claim on an estate can erode what’s left for the people you intended to benefit, sometimes forcing the sale of a family home or other assets nobody wanted to part with.
Mistake 4: No immediate liquidity for the family left behind
Winding up an estate takes time, often many months, sometimes longer. In the meantime, a surviving family still has funeral costs, day-to-day living expenses, and financial obligations that continue while an estate is finalised. Too often, estate plans focus only on the eventual distribution of assets while overlooking the immediate cash needs of the people left behind in those first difficult weeks.
Mistake 5: Assuming the job is done once assets pass to a spouse
It’s common, and often sensible, for spouses to leave everything to each other, taking advantage of spousal exemptions from estate duty and CGT. But this only defers the tax liability; it doesn’t eliminate it. When the surviving spouse later passes away, their estate faces the same death taxes and administration costs all over again, often without any life cover in place to fund them, since it may have lapsed or paid out entirely on the first death. Estate plans that only account for the first death, and not the second, can leave the next generation exposed at the precise moment they can least afford it.
Mistake 6: Treating estate planning as a once-off checklist item
The most common mistake of all isn’t any one oversight but the way estate planning tends to happen in fragments. A client drafts a Will here, takes out life cover there, and is handed a list of next steps they never quite get around to finishing. Each piece may be individually sound, but if they aren’t coordinated, gaps open up between them: a beneficiary nomination that doesn’t match the Will, life cover that doesn’t reflect the estate’s actual size, or a testamentary trust that was recommended but never actually established.
Closing the gaps
Avoiding these mistakes doesn’t require a complicated process – it requires a coordinated one. A Will, adequate life cover, and professional fiduciary support need to work together, not as separate boxes to tick, but as a single, aligned plan that accounts for costs, taxes, immediate liquidity, and what happens beyond the first death.
This is where a more integrated approach to estate planning can make a meaningful difference. Have a fully integrated solution that brings Wills drafting, estate-focused life cover and fiduciary services together in one place, so that nothing falls through the cracks between them.
Regardless of which structure you choose, the underlying lesson holds: estate planning done in isolated pieces tends to fail in isolated ways. Done as a coordinated whole, it does exactly what it’s meant to – protect the people left behind, at the moment they need it most.
Written by Chris Weyer, Head of Marketing at Momentum Trust