Most South Africans still don’t have a will. Here’s a free way to fix that.

South Africa doesn’t have one single reliable number for how many people die without a valid will, but every version of the statistic points the same way. The Master of the High Court’s own data puts it at under 15% of South Africans having a will when they die. Other surveys and industry figures put the number without a will anywhere from two-thirds to over 80%. However it’s measured, most South African adults are leaving how their estate gets divided up to the law, not to themselves.

That matters more than people assume. Without a will, an estate is distributed under South Africa’s intestate succession rules, a fixed formula that doesn’t ask who you’d actually want to inherit. A spouse doesn’t automatically inherit everything, even after a long marriage. And if a minor child is due to inherit, their share doesn’t go to a parent or guardian to manage: it’s paid into the Guardian’s Fund, a government-administered fund, and held there until the child turns 18. None of this requires a complicated estate to go wrong. It applies to anyone who dies without a signed, witnessed will, property owner or not.

The usual reason people give for putting it off is that drafting a will sounds like it needs a lawyer, an appointment, and a fee. That’s no longer the only option. Get a Will (getawill.co.za), built by the team at Vision Brokers, is a free tool that walks you through a plain-language questionnaire covering your details, your marital status, and how you’d like your estate handled. At the end, you get a properly worded draft will to download, print, and sign, with a clear walkthrough of exactly what South African law requires to make it valid: two competent witnesses, signing in the right places, nothing left to guess at.

It’s built for straightforward estates: a single beneficiary, or a spouse-and-children split, no trust involved, no minor children needing specialist planning. If your estate is more particular (a trust, a business interest, foreign assets, or a three-way-plus beneficiary structure), the tool says so plainly and offers time with a qualified will specialist instead, at no cost and no obligation to buy anything. Every will drafted through the tool sits under the licence of Vision Risk and Investment Consultants (Pty) Ltd, FSP registration 43853, so it isn’t a template mill, it’s licensed advice.

There’s no account, no payment, and no catch. If you’d also like a realistic idea of what it costs an estate to wind up, or want to talk through cover for those costs, that’s entirely optional, and handled by a licensed broker, not built into the drafting process as a sales pitch.

If it’s been sitting on your to-do list for a while, this is a reasonable place to finally cross it off: www.getawill.co.za