Succession Is a Curriculum, Not an Event

A house passes to the next generation well before the will is read, or else it passes to people who have never seen its paperwork.

Imagine a mother who owns a rented house in Tzaneen and handles everything herself. She knows the tenant, collects the rent, pays the rates, calls the plumber she trusts and keeps the title deed in a drawer. Her children live in other cities and have never seen the lease. When she passes away, the executor has to find all of this, and the children who will inherit the house have to decide whether to keep it or sell it while knowing almost nothing. Was the tenant's deposit kept in a separate account? Are the rates paid up? Was the back room ever approved? The transfer to the heirs can only happen once the executor has done the work of winding up the estate, and every unanswered question slows that down.

Succession works better as a curriculum. The children sit in on a lease renewal one year, read a municipal statement the next, and know where the deed and the plans are kept long before anyone needs them. By the time the estate reaches the conveyancer, the heirs already understand the house instead of meeting it as strangers.

Most of it looks very ordinary. A phone call to include someone in a small decision, made many times over.