Search
  1. Home
  2. Southern Africa
  3. South Africa

Orphans suffer when parents leave no will

    JOHANNESBURG

    South Africa's child-headed households often struggle because parents who succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses had not drawn up a will, a legal expert said on Wednesday.

    "Many of the 35,000 child-headed households currently have property and assets tied up in the Master of the High Court's Office," Pat Moodley, director of legal services in the department of justice, told the local Mercury newspaper.

    He noted that funds held in trust by the Master's Office as a result of poor planning by parents before they died had escalated by 75 percent over the past four years.

    Moodley was addressing a workshop organised by the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Campus Law Clinic to educate HIV-positive parents on how to provide financial security for their children in the event of death.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

    Share this article

    Our ability to deliver compelling, field-based reporting on humanitarian crises rests on a few key principles: deep expertise, an unwavering commitment to amplifying affected voices, and a belief in the power of independent journalism to drive real change.

    We need your help to sustain and expand our work. Your donation will support our unique approach to journalism, helping fund everything from field-based investigations to the innovative storytelling that ensures marginalised voices are heard.

    Please consider joining our membership programme. Together, we can continue to make a meaningful impact on how the world responds to crises.

    Become a member of The New Humanitarian

    Support our journalism and become more involved in our community. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide.

    Join