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From: Delia Robertson <>
Subject: Re: Death Certificate
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 09:39:32 +0200
References: <015f01c05e20$d6578c00$a51b07c4@jillm>


Like Jill, I too have found death notices when there is no estate.

When someone dies in South Africa it was (and is) a requirement that the
death notice form be completed at the time of death. This notice becomes
the founding document in the estate file, but even if there is no estate, it
must still be archived in the prescribed manner.

It must be completed by an immediate relative if one is available - even if
the death occurs in hospital, retirement home, and so on. If there is no
immediate relative available, then it could be another relative
(grandparent/child, cousin etc.) and if none of those, then attorney,
employer, director/manager of institution and so on.

The amount and accuracy of the information on the notice depends on the how
much the individual completing the form knows about the deceased and how
thorough they are or even how overcome by grief they might be.

When my father died in 1992, I never gave the death notice a thought --- one
of my brothers completed it. In fact, as a family, we were quite unprepared
for my father's death and so we had no emergency information on hand to help
us deal with the formalities. In the years before my mother's death this
time last year, she was living with me. So after it became clear, and I
began to accept, that she would not be with us much longer, I prepared and
kept handy an emergency file with all the information I could possibly need
to deal with the formalities when the time came. Consequently, while the
information in both death notices is accurate - my mother's is far more
comprehensive. On another level, the file turned out to be immensely
helpful to us as a family, giving us a lot more freedom to grieve and
comfort each other because we did not have to think, much less worry, about
what we needed to do to take care of the formalities. Even so, my siblings
being who they are, these days when we get together as a family I not only
come in for a lot of ribbing at my so-called pre-occupation with the dead,
it now includes the yet-to-be-dead. Ahh well! :))

Regards.
Delia Robertson.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jill Martin
Subject: Re: Death Certificate


| Maureen
|
| I obtained a photocopy of the death notice of one of my impecunious
| ancestors who died in what is now the Eastern Cape from the Mowbray FHC.
It
| bluntly states: "Left nothing", and she died a natural death at her
| daughter's home in her old age. So maybe what you wrote doesn't always
| apply. This particular one had an amazing amount of information about her
| family, so I feel it's worth a try.


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