Electronic wills in South Africa

Abstract

Sizwe Snail and Nicholas Hall set out the provisions for wills in South Africa, including the provisions of the Electronic Communication Transaction Act that expressly exclude a data message as a method of executing a valid will. They then consider the case of Macdonald v The Master, in which the court held that a draft will in the form of an electronically stored document which was stored on a computer hard-disk, can be condoned in terms of the Wills Act.