Trust, But Verify: What the Regulation of Trusts Bill Means for Your Agency

A trust bought a small guesthouse in Constantia sixteen years ago. The parents who set it up have since stepped back, and the two adult children who inherited the trusteeship now run it as an investment, alongside a family friend who was added as a third trustee for good measure. When the trust decides to sell, the agency taking the mandate asks for the usual: the trust deed, letters of authority, and the beneficial ownership register the trustees are required to keep on file with the Master of the High Court.

The register they hand over was last touched three years ago. It names the two children as beneficiaries and trustees, lists the friend as a trustee, and nothing else has changed since, or so everyone assumes. Under the law as it stands today, that is broadly adequate. Under a Bill that has been open for public comment since early August 2026, the same file looks a great deal riskier, for the trustees who signed it and for the agency that accepted it without asking when it was last checked.

Why this matters right now

On 7 August 2026, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development published the Regulation of Trusts Bill for public comment, alongside two other draft bills. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mmamoloko Kubayi briefed the public on the package on 11 August 2026, and the comment window on all three closes on 11 September 2026. Once that closes, the department will consider submissions before deciding on a final version to take to Cabinet and, eventually, Parliament. Nothing in it is law yet, and the drafting could still shift, but the direction is clear enough to plan around.

The Bill would replace the Trust Property Control Act of 1988, which has not had a comprehensive rewrite in the 38 years since. The department has framed the overhaul explicitly around closing gaps that let trustees evade accountability, strengthening protection for vulnerable beneficiaries, and aligning South Africa's trust regime with Financial Action Task Force recommendations on the misuse of legal arrangements for money laundering. For an industry that already treats trust-owned property as a higher-scrutiny category of client, that framing matters more than the fine print.

It is also worth remembering how thin the current process actually is. Since the 2023 amendment took effect, trustees have registered beneficial ownership information with the Master through a web form that has them sign in with a Google account, complete an Excel spreadsheet template, and upload it. There is no independent verification step built in, and no way for a third party, including an estate agency, to look up what a trust has filed. Practitioners have been asking for a proper electronic register for years, and the department has effectively agreed by proposing to rebuild the whole regime rather than patch it again. South Africa's exit from the FATF grey list in October 2025 did not end the scrutiny either. The country's next full mutual evaluation runs from the first half of 2026 through October 2027, and the department has said explicitly that this Bill is meant to bring trust regulation in line with what that evaluation expects to see.

1The beneficial ownership definition gets wider

The current rules already ask trustees to identify beneficiaries, founders, and trustees as beneficial owners, in line with the definition estate agencies already work with for their own FICA client due diligence. The draft Bill extends this further by requiring trustees to identify individual beneficiaries even when a trust deed only describes a class, such as "the children of the founder," rather than naming them. A discretionary family trust that has always described its beneficiaries in general terms would need to name the actual people. For an agency, that means the beneficial ownership picture you are handed for a trust client may need to be more specific than what satisfied the same file two years ago.

2Ten days, not eventually

The draft requires trustees to update their beneficial ownership information and lodge the change with the Master within ten days of it happening, whether that is a new trustee, a change in beneficiaries, or an amended deed. There is no grace period built in for busy trustees or agencies waiting on paperwork. If your file for a trust client is going to rely on a beneficial ownership register, the register's own currency becomes something worth checking rather than assuming, particularly for trusts with slow-moving family administration.

3Annual returns and financial statements become mandatory

Trustees would need to file prescribed information returns within six months of each trust's anniversary date, and prepare annual financial statements, with an exemption only for trusts whose inflows and outflows fall below a threshold the Minister will set. A trust that has operated informally for years, filing nothing beyond its original registration, would suddenly have a compliance calendar to keep. An agency handling a sale for a trust that has clearly never filed anything of the sort has a reasonable basis to ask more questions before the file goes further.

4Trust deed changes get frozen until the register is current

Under the draft, an amendment to a trust deed cannot take effect until it has been lodged with the Master and acknowledged, and the trust's beneficial ownership information must be current before that happens. In practice, this means a trustee cannot quietly add or remove a trustee the week before a sale and only update the paperwork afterwards. If a trust-owned property comes to market shortly after a change in trustees, that timing is worth noting on the file, since the amendment itself may not yet be validly in effect.

5Document retention becomes a five-year tail

The draft requires trustees to keep trust instruments, financial records, contracts, and distribution documents throughout their time in office, and for five years after they leave. A trustee who resigns from a family trust the year before a sale does not get to walk away from the paper trail. If your client's trust has recently changed trustees, the departing trustee's records may still matter to the file, and asking who holds them is a reasonable question rather than an awkward one.

6Independent trustees for family-run investment trusts

The Bill would let the Master appoint an independent trustee, someone unrelated to the founder and the other trustees, wherever all of a trust's trustees are also its beneficiaries, all are related to one another, and the trust conducts business with third parties. That description fits a large share of the family trusts that hold rental or investment property and sell through agencies, exactly the Constantia guesthouse scenario above. A trust that has always been run entirely by family members may find itself required to bring in an outside trustee before its next transaction, which can affect who is authorised to sign and how long that takes to arrange. For an agency, a mandate that suddenly needs a new, unfamiliar signatory partway through a sale is worth flagging early rather than discovering at the point of transfer.

7The Master gets real enforcement teeth

Beyond appointing independent trustees, the draft expands the Master's power to remove trustees, including where a trust is under business rescue or debt review, or where a trustee simply fails to meet the new duties. It also gives the Master authority to open an investigation following an account review or a pattern of non-compliance, with the costs of that investigation ordinarily recoverable from the trust's own property. A trust under active Master scrutiny at the point of sale is not a routine file, and it is worth knowing before an agency commits to a mandate rather than after.

8False beneficial ownership information becomes a crime

The draft sets out a graduated enforcement path: a compliance notice first, for missing information or documents, then an administrative fine if the notice is ignored, payable personally by the trustee and not recoverable from trust property. Above that sits a criminal offence for a trustee who intentionally provides false beneficial ownership information, carrying a fine of up to R10 million, imprisonment of up to five years, or both. Failing to retain the required records can also attract criminal liability. That is a materially higher bar than anything the current Act imposes, and it changes the incentive for a trustee handing your agency a register: getting it wrong on paper is no longer just an administrative loose end.

A trustee under this Bill is not filling in a form for its own sake anymore. They are creating a record that can convict them. That changes how carefully you should read the register a trust client hands you, and how clearly your own file shows when you asked the question.

None of this rewrites what an estate agency has to do under FICA. Your obligation to identify and verify beneficial owners of a trust client, and to screen them against sanctions and PEP lists, does not change because a trustee's own paperwork becomes more rigorous. What changes is the shape of the document you are likely to be handed, and the questions worth asking before you accept it at face value.

The short version

The Regulation of Trusts Bill is a draft, not law, and comments close on 11 September 2026. It would replace a 38-year-old Act with wider beneficial ownership rules, a ten-day update window, mandatory annual filings, a five-year document retention tail, a path to court-appointed independent trustees for family-run investment trusts, and criminal liability for trustees who falsify beneficial ownership information. Nothing about it removes an estate agency's own duty to verify who actually controls a trust client, and nothing yet builds a way for agencies to check the Master's register directly. What it does is raise the cost of a trustee getting their own paperwork wrong, which is exactly the kind of paperwork your file already depends on.

Lucere already screens beneficial owners for trust and company clients the same way it screens individuals, against Home Affairs and sanctions and PEP watchlists, and keeps a dated, immutable record of exactly when each check was run and what it found. If a Bill like this one becomes law, that habit of dating your own work will matter even more than it does today, because a trustee's paperwork will no longer be something you can take on faith just because it exists. Try the live demo with your own name and company, or look up a term in the compliance glossary.