The Master of the High Court underwent IT upgrades countrywide in September due to them falling victim to a cyber-attack. This resulted in the closure of various branches countrywide and a refusal to accept manually submitted documents. Some of the branches have reopened but business processes remain affected. As a result of these branch closures our fiduciary department is experiencing major disruptions to services relating to deceased estates and trusts.
The effects of the above are that new trust registrations and deceased estate lodgements are not being processed. This has caused serious prejudice to many of our clients who are heirs of deceased estates or beneficiaries of Trusts, but cannot access funds because the requisite documents cannot be attained.
The Chief Master, several of the Masters, representatives of the Dept of Justice IT officials, and representatives of SAICA, SARIPA, FISA, and attorneys associations met online this month to navigate the way forward. Suffice it to say that there is still no indication as to when the service delivery will be restored.
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