frequently asked questions

Visit our estate lookup page and enter the estate reference number or the deceased's name. The tool retrieves status information from the Master of the High Court's records and presents it in plain language — no registration required, no cost.

Results show you the current stage of the estate and what that stage means in practical terms.

The Master of the High Court's records use specific status codes to show where an estate stands in the administration process. LegacyCheck translates these codes into plain language — for example, "Letters of Executorship Issued" means an executor has been formally appointed and active administration has begun, while "L&D Account Lodged" means the estate has entered its final inspection period before distribution can take place.

Each status displayed on LegacyCheck includes a plain-language explanation of what it means and what typically comes next in the process.

LegacyCheck shows the current status of a deceased estate as recorded by the Master of the High Court — including which stage of the administration process the estate has reached, and a plain-language explanation of what that stage means for the family.

Our data reflects what is on record at the Master's Office. Any delays in the government's record-keeping will be reflected in the results, and we do not modify or interpret the underlying data beyond presenting it clearly.

There are a few possible reasons an estate may not appear. The estate may not yet have been formally reported to the Master of the High Court, or it may have been reported very recently and not yet reflected in the records. The name or reference number entered may also differ slightly from how it was registered.

Try searching by the estate reference number if you have it, or check that the spelling of the deceased's name matches what appears on official documents. If you believe the estate has been reported and it still does not appear, contact the relevant Master's Office directly.

Yes — completely free. LegacyCheck's estate lookup tool is free to use and will remain free. No registration, no credit card, no hidden steps. We believe families dealing with estate administration should be able to access basic information about their loved one's estate without having to pay for it.

Our estate lookup tool is completely free — you can check the status of any reported estate at no cost, with no registration required. Our guides, glossary, fee calculator, and FAQ section are also free.

Paid services such as ongoing estate monitoring and status alerts are described on our pricing page with full transparency — no hidden fees and no "contact sales" gatekeeping.

The free estate lookup gives you the current recorded status of any estate at the moment you search — a one-time snapshot. A paid monitoring plan watches the estate continuously and sends you an alert the moment the status changes, so you don't need to keep checking manually.

Monitoring plans also include stage-by-stage explanations of what each change means and what to expect next in the process. See our pricing page for full details.

After performing a free estate lookup, you can subscribe to monitoring for that estate from the results page. You will receive a notification — by email — as soon as the recorded status changes at the Master of the High Court.

Monitoring plans are available for individuals tracking a single estate and for practitioners managing multiple estates. See our pricing page for details.

Yes, with a paid practitioner or enterprise plan. Individual family monitoring plans cover a single estate. Practitioner plans support portfolio-level monitoring — tracking multiple estates simultaneously from a single dashboard, with RAG status coding so you can see at a glance which matters need attention.

See our pricing page or the practitioners page for more detail.

All estate status information on LegacyCheck is sourced from the Master of the High Court's publicly accessible records — the same government system used to track deceased estates across South Africa. We retrieve this data and present it in plain language; we do not create or modify it.

Because the data comes from a government system, there may occasionally be a delay between what has happened in the estate process and when it is reflected in the records.

LegacyCheck retrieves estate status information from the Master of the High Court's publicly accessible records. Updates reflect what has been processed by the Master's Office — there is no fixed cadence, as the timing of record updates depends on the government's own processing timelines.

Subscribers on a paid monitoring plan receive an alert as soon as a change is detected in the records, rather than having to check manually.

Yes. We take data protection seriously. The estate lookup is built on publicly available records from the Master of the High Court. Any ID number you enter is hashed before it is stored — meaning we cannot recover it. We do not link search queries to your identity.

For full details on what we collect and why, see our Privacy Policy.