The Master's offices one by one
The research section's figures, regrouped: a page for each Master's office, with that office's numbers and charts from top to bottom.
Each office at a glance
The median time from the notice to creditors to the account for accounts in 2025, against the national median; and the estates advertised in the five years before the latest month end, whose notice to creditors names the office, that had no account by then.
| Office | Median, notice to account, 2025 | Open estates advertised in the previous five years, end of September 2026 | Of them, more than twelve months since the notice to creditors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bhisho | 6 months (national 9 months) | 494 | 310 (63%) |
| Bloemfontein | 8 months (national 9 months) | 4,090 | 2,582 (63%) |
| Cape Town | 9 months (national 9 months) | 17,561 | 10,510 (60%) |
| Durban | 9 months (national 9 months) | 11,348 | 7,177 (63%) |
| Makhanda (Grahamstown) | 8 months (national 9 months) | 1,769 | 1,052 (59%) |
| Johannesburg | 8 months (national 9 months) | 23,068 | 14,628 (63%) |
| Kimberley | 1.2 years (national 9 months) | 1,947 | 1,246 (64%) |
| Mahikeng | 9 months (national 9 months) | 2,872 | 1,780 (62%) |
| Middelburg | 7 months (national 9 months) | 1,062 | 490 (46%) |
| Mthatha | 9 months (national 9 months) | 1,055 | 718 (68%) |
| Nelspruit (Mbombela) | 1.8 years (national 9 months) | 2,143 | 1,682 (78%) |
| Pietermaritzburg | 7 months (national 9 months) | 4,104 | 2,523 (61%) |
| Polokwane | 11 months (national 9 months) | 3,466 | 2,367 (68%) |
| Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) | 6 months (national 9 months) | 2,669 | 1,564 (59%) |
| Pretoria | 8 months (national 9 months) | 8,988 | 5,601 (62%) |
| Thohoyandou | 1.1 years (national 9 months) | 787 | 592 (75%) |
A further 7,412 open estates, 6,905 of them more than twelve months since the notice to creditors, name no office, so they are in none of the rows above.
Estates that reached an account, by the office on it, from 2017; an office's year under 30 estates is left out. The slowest are still open, so slow offices look faster than they are.
The office is the one the notice to creditors names after the date of death; it matches the office of the estate's account in 98.2% of estates that have both. Only estates advertised in the five years before the month end count, and only those whose notice names an office: filers began printing it in 2021, so estates advertised before then are mostly left out.
The same numbers for all the offices together are on The Master's offices compared and Open estates and the backlog. Release 2026-10-02b.