Dear Glynnis Breytenbach,

I wrote to you 3 days ago about the Dept of J & CD's failure to respect the rights of citizens with regard to the handling of deceased estates, which is one of their important mandates.
The focus of that letter was: if the Dept of J& CD does not do its work, then the citizen has nowhere else to go because that dept has the sole mandate wrt deceased estates.

This letter seeks to describe, specifically, the failure of the Master's Office in Cape Town to carry out the administrative duties (for which it is responsible) concerning deceased estates. I shall list some of the serious difficulties - related to me by our lawyer - that she has experienced with this office:
* Appointment of executor of the deceased's estate - this generally takes more than a year for them to do, thus the backlog of cases. There are further delays with the Certificate of Executorship. There are often no reasons given for the further delay.
* When a lawyer makes an appointment to see the official busy with the case, the official may not be there for the meeting - no advance notice given.
* The officials make promises about a decision being made by a certain date - and then one does not hear from them again. No communication received from them.
* There are a certain number of weeks per year when officials "do not see lawyers at all".
* Officials do not consider the ages of the family members who are responsible for taking the matter of the deceased estate forward: 74 years, 72 years, 69 years. This causes distress as these family members do not know what will happen when they are gone and there is nobody to follow through on the case.
* The staff of the MO in Cape Town do not believe that they are denying citizens their right to have a deceased estate "wound up", so that there is finality on the matter.