On 25 September 2026 the Master of the High Court published this year’s Guardian’s Fund list in Government Gazette 55448, notices 7963 to 7968. The Department of Justice splits it by office: Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Makhanda, Kimberley, Pietermaritzburg, and Pretoria with Mmabatho. The page that points to it is practical. If your name is on the list, you lodge the forms with the Master’s office that holds the money.
The notice is easy to misread. It is not a list of money about to be forfeited. Under section 91 of the Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965, the Master publishes amounts of R1,000 or more that have been claimable and unclaimed for at least one year, and not more than three. The Cape Town notice uses the books at 31 July 2026. The Makhanda notice uses 28 July 2026. Older lists on the same Justice page are labelled the same way. A name in that gazette means the money has already been waiting. It does not mean the thirty-year clock has run out.
Where a minor’s inheritance waits
Children under 18 cannot manage an inheritance themselves. Where a parent dies without a will, or with a will that simply leaves money to a minor and stops there, the cash portion can be paid into the Guardian’s Fund. The Master holds it until the child turns 18, and can pay amounts out earlier for maintenance, school fees and similar needs if someone applies properly.
Hayley Parry, chief education officer at Worth, set this out in the Mail & Guardian on 21 September 2026. A basic will, including the free one drafted in National Wills Week, does not usually create a testamentary trust. A trust in the will is one route a parent has for naming who should manage the money, and how it should be used for care and school. Without that, or something equivalent arranged with a professional, the fund is often where the cash ends up.
The scale is not small. The Guardian’s Fund annual report for the year to 31 March 2025 shows total liabilities of R18.8 billion, on total assets of R22.3 billion. The statements put liabilities at R18,813,820,000. During that year the fund took in R1,792,604,000 in beneficiary deposits, which the narrative rounds to R1.793 billion. The money is invested, and the cash-flow statement records about R1.86 billion in interest received from the Public Investment Corporation. It is still other people’s money, waiting on a claim.
Thirty years is a different rule
Section 92 is the forfeiture rule, and it is separate from the September list. Money in the Guardian’s Fund that stays unclaimed for thirty years from the date the person became entitled to it is forfeited to the state. The fund’s accounts describe the same point, with the amount then moving to the National Revenue Fund.
That stock is much smaller than the R18.8 billion. At 31 March 2025 the line already classified as thirty-year unclaimed closed at R13,974,000. In the year the fund paid R6,878,000 to the National Revenue Fund. The September gazette is the one-to-three-year publication under section 91. Section 92 is the long stop. A child who turns 18 and never hears about the money can still claim for years. After three decades, the claim is gone.
A person in Cape Town does not magically know that a grandmother’s estate in Makhanda left a balance in their name. The list is public. Finding yourself on it still depends on someone looking.
The claim is a set of papers
The Justice department’s instruction is the same whichever notice you are answering. Lodge three things with the Master’s office that holds the money: the Guardian’s Fund inheritance requirements pack, form CEFTU 3 for bank and personal details, and form J251. Form J251A is the one for a payment that has to go abroad. The requirements pack asks for the documents that prove who you are and why the money is yours. An identity document. Details of the estate. Sometimes a death certificate, a letter of authority, proof of the relationship.
None of that is exotic. It is also exactly what goes missing. The original will was with an attorney who retired. The estate number was on a letter that got thrown out with the junk mail. The surviving parent knew which Master’s office handled it, and never wrote it down.
A Digital Legacy Binder is a place for that trail: the estate reference, a copy of the death certificate, the Master’s office, the child’s ID number, the name of the attorney who reported the estate. It does not replace the forms, and it does not move money out of the fund. It gives the person who has to claim something to start from, instead of a surname search through a gazette PDF.
This is not a will, and it should not pretend to be one. A forgotten passphrase on an encrypted vault cannot be reset by anyone, including the company that stores the ciphertext. If the file matters, a second trusted person needs a way in that you have actually set up. Family sharing of selected records, or a legacy release you have switched on, is a decision, not a default.
The will still does not touch the pension
Parry’s other point is easy to miss while you are thinking about the fund. For a lot of working South Africans the largest asset is a retirement fund, and a will has no authority over the death benefit. Section 37C of the Pension Funds Act keeps that benefit out of the estate. Trustees identify dependants and nominees and allocate what they consider equitable. A nomination form guides them. It does not bind them.
Parry notes that the Constitutional Court looked at how dependency is read in August 2025, and that the Supreme Court of Appeal built on that in May 2026. The practical consequence for a family is older than either judgment. The nomination form lives with the fund administrator, not in the will packet. If the only copy is a PDF in an old inbox, the trustees still have to trace people, and they will take the time the Act allows them.
A binder that holds the fund name, the membership number and a note of who was nominated does not decide the allocation. It shortens the part of the delay that is just searching.
What to put where someone can find it
None of this is a reason to draft your own trust clause. Testamentary trusts, guardian appointments and section 37C nominations belong with an attorney and, where the pension is concerned, with the fund. The Sanlam Legacy 2026 survey, a convenience sample, still found only 28% of respondents with a valid will, and 39% of will-holders had not told the executor where the document was. A signed will that nobody can locate does not keep a child out of the fund.
If you are the parent, three checks are enough to start:
- Ask whoever drafted the will whether a minor’s inheritance is dealt with, or whether it is heading for the Guardian’s Fund by default.
- Write down the Master’s office, the estate reference if one already exists, and where the original will is kept. Tell one adult who is not you.
- Keep the child’s unabridged birth certificate, both parents’ IDs and the fund nomination confirmation somewhere the surviving adult can open without a hunt.
If you are the adult child, the September list is public. The Justice department hosts it under the Master’s Guardian’s Fund pages. A name match is not a payout. It is a reason to gather the J251 pack and talk to that office, or to an attorney if the estate was contested.
The money in the fund is already administered. The missing piece, more often than not, is the file that tells a family it is there.
Sources: Department of Justice, Guardian’s Fund unclaimed list; Government Gazette 55448, 25 September 2026; Guardian’s Fund annual report 2024/25 (PMG); Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965, section 92; Mail & Guardian, Hayley Parry, 21 September 2026.