Pietermaritzburg Master’s office gets mixed reviews

The Master’s office in Pietermaritzburg has received mixed reviews. Illustration by Bronwyn Webb

“I generally find that the Pietermaritzburg Master’s office is fairly good,” an attorney told GroundUp. “It is high time the Master is exposed for the lack of service,” another attorney told us.

Opinion on the quality of service at the Pietermaritzburg Master’s office is sharply divided. We spoke to numerous law firms that interact regularly with the office, but only a few were willing to comment, mostly anonymously.

The Master of the High Court oversees key legal functions, including curatorships, deceased estates, insolvencies, trusts and the Guardian’s Fund.

One general piece of advice that emerged from those who had both positive and negative experiences was that when dealing with the Pietermaritzburg Master’s office, it is best to use paper and go in person.

Phone calls and emails go unanswered, said an attorney. Visiting the office in person with paper documents is the safest and best way to interact.

AG Jenkins Attorneys’ Nikita Naidoo said her firm has a staff member going to the office in person three times a week. They have not had any documents lost.

Another attorney said email is useless because the Master insisted on using original paper documents.

Two attorneys said that progressing matters required constant effort and visits to the office. One blamed this on a lack of staff. Another cited piles of files in officials’ offices as evidence of understaffing.

Several attorneys mentioned the difficulty of accessing old files on the government’s Veritas digital system, described as “torturous”.

Naidoo said older files sent to the Veritas system sit unscanned and therefore unavailable for download. But, she said, officials can usually locate and scan files if Veritas has not yet done so. “I think we have a handful of files that are waiting to be scanned or downloaded.”

She is “quite impressed’’ by the office. “We are getting new matters in and out … sometimes in two weeks.”

But another attorney said, “You literally need to keep a copy of everything you deliver because it’s guaranteed that you will need to refer to those copies again.”

One attorney said the South African Revenue Service (SARS) causes delays. “When tax affairs are not fully up to date at the time of death, the administrative burden increases substantially … Estate duty and income tax clearances from SARS are taking materially longer than the timeframe prescribed, which has a direct knock-on effect on finalising estates.”

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