When a debtor dies, the debt does not die with them. It becomes a claim against a deceased estate — and that claim is governed by a short, statutory, publicly advertised timetable. The advertisement appears in the Government Gazette. Miss it, and your claim is not automatically extinguished, but you lose your place in a process that will not wait for you.
For collections teams, BPOs and in-house recoveries functions, this is one of the few areas where the law tells you exactly when to act and publishes the starting gun in a searchable public record. The problem is not knowing what to do. The problem is finding out that the notice was published at all.
The two notices that matter
Under the Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965, an executor must advertise a deceased estate twice. Both advertisements appear in the Gazette and in a newspaper circulating in the district where the deceased ordinarily resided. Each one starts a different clock.
Section 29: the notice to creditors
Once the Master of the High Court issues letters of executorship, the executor publishes a notice under section 29(1) calling on debtors of the estate to pay and creditors of the estate to lodge their claims. The notice specifies the period — not less than 30 days and not more than three months from the date of the later of the two publications.
In practice, most executors specify 30 days. That is your window to submit a properly substantiated claim to the executor.
What a lodged claim should include:
- The estate number and the deceased's full name and ID number, exactly as they appear in the notice
- A statement of the amount claimed, with interest calculated to date of death
- Supporting documents: the credit agreement, statement of account, judgment or acknowledgement of debt
- Whether the claim is secured (mortgage bond, notarial bond, cession) or concurrent
- Your contact details and the executor's reference
Section 35: the account lying for inspection
Once the executor has drawn the liquidation and distribution account, a second notice is published under section 35(5). It states that the account lies open for inspection at the Master's office and the relevant Magistrate's Court for at least 21 days.
This is the interested party's opportunity to inspect how the estate is being wound up and, if the treatment of a claim is wrong, to lodge an objection with the Master within that period. Once the inspection period closes with no objection, the executor distributes.
The first account must ordinarily be lodged with the Master within six months of letters of executorship being granted — but extensions are common and estates frequently run far longer. Do not assume the section 35 notice will follow the section 29 notice on a predictable schedule. Monitor for it.
The practical timeline
- Death occurs. No public notice yet. Your account simply stops paying.
- Estate reported to the Master. Letters of executorship (or letters of authority for small estates) are issued.
- Section 29 notice published in the Gazette. Your 30-day window opens.
- Claims lodged and assessed. The executor realises assets and settles administration costs and secured claims.
- Section 35 notice published in the Gazette. The account lies for inspection for 21 days.
- Objection period closes. Distribution follows.
Between steps 2 and 3 there is often a gap of months. Between steps 3 and 5 there is often a gap of a year or more. The two moments where the estate is visible to you are both Gazette publications — and the SA Gazette publishes weekly, on Fridays. If nobody on your team reads it, you find out about the estate when a family member calls, or you never find out at all.
What actually goes wrong
The failure mode is almost never legal. It is operational.
The account is still in an arrears workflow. A deceased debtor looks identical to a non-paying debtor in most collections systems. Calls go unanswered, letters go unreturned, and the account ages into write-off while the estate is quietly advertised, administered and distributed.
Nobody is checking the Gazette by name or ID. Manual review means one person scanning a weekly PDF against a book of thousands of names. It does not scale, and it fails silently.
The section 35 notice is missed even when section 29 was caught. Teams lodge a claim, mark the file "claim submitted", and never watch for the account. If the claim was treated as concurrent when it should have been secured, or omitted entirely, the objection window passes unnoticed.
Prescription is left to run. Under the Prescription Act 68 of 1969, an ordinary debt prescribes after three years. Prescription can be interrupted by an express or tacit acknowledgement of liability by the debtor, or by service of process. A debtor who has died can do neither. Lodging a claim against the estate is a step you have to take deliberately and in time.
Insolvent deceased estates
Not every estate has enough to go around. Where the executor finds the estate insolvent, section 34 requires them to report the position to creditors in writing and give them a specified period — not less than 14 days — to instruct, by majority in number and value, that the estate be surrendered under the Insolvency Act 24 of 1936. Absent that instruction, the executor realises the assets under the Administration of Estates Act.
For a creditor this materially changes the calculus: the recovery route, the ranking of your claim and the practitioner you are dealing with all shift. It is another reason to know early, not late.
Building a repeatable process
The compliant version of this workflow has four moving parts:
- Screen the book, not the file. Run your full debtor list — ID numbers and names — against deceased estate notices on a fixed cycle. Weekly matches the Gazette's publication rhythm.
- Route matches to a dedicated estates queue. A matched account should leave the arrears workflow immediately. Different deadline, different documents, different counterparty.
- Capture the estate number and the executor. The estate number is your reference for everything that follows. The executor is who you lodge with — and their contact details are frequently the hardest part to find.
- Watchlist the estate for the section 35 notice. Lodging the claim is the first half of the job. Seeing the account is the second.
Gazette Search was built for exactly this shape of work. It indexes over 900,000 notices, with coverage back to 2004, and lets you search by ID number, name, estate number or company registration number. Bulk upload takes up to 100,000 identifiers in a single run, so a full book screen is a file upload rather than a project. A find-a-professional directory covers executors, trustees, liquidators and sheriffs, and watchlists with email alerts cover the gap between the section 29 and section 35 notices. Results export to CSV, and an API is available for teams that want matches landing in their own system.
Pricing is prepaid credits: one credit per search, however many results come back. On the free tier and the Single through Pro packs, a search that returns no result is not charged — bulk tiers are billed per record, hit or miss. The free tier gives you five free searches, and a miss does not use one up. A single search is R35; the Starter pack is 100 credits for R1,000 (R10 per search); Pro is 2,500 credits for R15,000 (R6 per search), scaling down to R0.55 per search at Volume. Credits are valid for 12 months and auto-refill takes 10% off. Set against manual per-search legal and data lookups that can run R500 or more, the arithmetic on a book of any size is not close.
See gazette-search.com or the pricing page for the full breakdown.
Frequently asked questions
How long do creditors have to lodge a claim against a deceased estate in South Africa?
The section 29 notice published in the Government Gazette specifies the period, which by law must be not less than 30 days and not more than three months from the date of the later publication. Most executors specify 30 days. The exact deadline is stated in the notice itself, so read it rather than assuming.
What happens if I miss the section 29 deadline?
A late claim is not automatically invalid, but the executor is entitled to proceed without it, and once the liquidation and distribution account has been confirmed and the estate distributed, recovery becomes considerably harder. If you discover the estate late, lodge immediately and check whether the section 35 account has already lain for inspection.
Where are deceased estate notices published in South Africa?
In the Government Gazette and in a newspaper circulating in the district where the deceased ordinarily resided at the time of death. The Gazette is the consistent, searchable record — the newspaper requirement varies by district, which is why Gazette monitoring is the reliable channel.
Can I search the Gazette by ID number?
Yes. Gazette Search indexes notices by ID number, full name, estate number and company registration number, and supports bulk screening of up to 100,000 identifiers in a single run. ID-number matching is the most reliable method because names are frequently misspelled or abbreviated in published notices.
What is the difference between the section 29 and section 35 notices?
The section 29 notice opens the window to lodge a claim, early in the administration. The section 35 notice announces that the liquidation and distribution account is open for inspection for at least 21 days, near the end. The first is your chance to claim; the second is your chance to object to how your claim was treated.