Cape Town - A South African family have shared their frustration at having had to wait more than three years for Standard Bank to sort out their late father’s estate worth millions, despite him having passed away in August 2019.
Martin de Oliveira, whose father Jacob was a client of Standard Bank’s Standard Trust Limited (STL), the division of the Standard Bank Group which handles deceased estates, said as far as he and his sister were concerned STL was “in complete disarray”.
In a letter he wrote to the Cape Argus, De Oliveira, who is from Johannesburg and works in Qatar, said: “My father Jacob Marthinus de Oliveira passed away on August 28, 2019. STL confirmed receipt of the notification of passing on September 6, 2019.
“At the date of writing, it is 1 093 days since STL confirmed receipt of notice of death, yet the estate is still not wound up.”
Oliveira, an accountant, said to add insult to injury the Estate Duty due on the estate had not been accurately calculated, “despite the fact that Standard Trust Limited declare themselves experts in estate affairs”.
Had it not been for the fact that he had some knowledge of estate regulations and had demanded corrections, hundreds of thousands of rand would have been lost, he said.
Responding to queries, Standard Bank spokesperson Nkosinathi Msiza said in the bank’s defence: “The administration of a deceased estate has become a very involved matter, particularly in recent years.”
Msiza listed a timeline of events and said the estate had been reported to the Master of the High Court on October 29, 2019, and the Section 29 advertisement for debtors of the estate was placed on December 6, 2019.
Part of the delay had been caused by the appointed executor leaving the employ of the Standard Trust in May 2021, he said.
As a result, a new nominee needed to be appointed as executor and this required a formal application for the endorsed letters of executorship to be amended to reflect the new nominee as acting for the estate.
The bank also blamed the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, the Master’s Office had suffered a backlog which in turn impacted on the bank’s processes, it said.
Msiza said: “We are currently finalising the drafting of the final liquidation and distribution account. This will be lodged with the Master of the High Court on Wednesday, October 26, for review by that office.”
On Wednesday, Oliveira confirmed that STL had just forwarded him confirmation that the submission to the Master’s Office had been made.
But he said in its timeline, the bank had failed to address any of the serious issues he had raised in his complaints, “the errors in calculating the estate duty in excess of R445000, notwithstanding the fact that they had made an initial payment in the amount of R500 000, based on the incorrect estimate, which is R94 000 more than the actual duty due on the estate, which now has to be recovered from the SA Revenue Service”.