The Regulation of Trusts Bill, 2026: What Changes for Your Trust

What has actually happened

South Africa has regulated trusts under the same statute since 1989 — the Trust Property Control Act 57 of 1988. It is short, thin, and was written before anyone worried about money laundering. Beneficial-ownership registers were bolted on with effect from 1 April 2023, through the anti-money-laundering reforms that followed South Africa’s FATF assessment — but the patch sat awkwardly on a 1988 frame.

The government has now published a draft to throw the whole thing out and start again. The last clause of the Bill is blunt about it:

The direction of travel is easy to summarise. The draft would pull trusts towards the way companies are regulated: file something every year, keep proper accounts, tell the regulator who is really behind the entity, and get fined administratively when you do not. If you have ever filed a CIPC annual return, the shape of what is proposed will feel familiar.

That is not automatically a bad thing. Much of the Bill would be a genuine improvement — it fills in gaps the 1988 Act left, and it modernises a process that still assumed registered post and notarially certified copies. But it would add real, recurring cost to running a trust, and it would move a meaningful amount of personal risk onto the individual trustee. If you are a business owner who is a trustee of your own family trust, both of those would land on you.

The changes at a glance

Nine changes account for most of the practical impact. The rest of this page works through the ones that cost money or create personal exposure.

Two new jobs every year

This is the part with a price tag. Today, a quiet family trust can go a whole year without filing anything with the Master. Under the Bill as drafted it would have to prepare financial statements every year and hand them to the Master whenever the Master asks, and it would have to file an annual return.

Financial statements become compulsory

The current Act has no annual-statement rule, but it is not silent on accounts. Section 11 requires a trustee to identify trust property clearly in their bookkeeping; section 16 lets the Master demand, at any time, an account of the administration, any book or record, and honest answers; and section 17 requires the records to be kept for five years after the trust ends. Whether formal financial statements are prepared today depends on the deed and on the trust’s own practice. The Bill makes preparation the default:

Note what the duty is and is not. The statements must be prepared each year; they are not routinely filed. They go to the Master only on written request — and then within a month:

The statements do not have to be audited, or even independently reviewed. Clause 20 would require them to be prepared. For a trust that keeps no accounts today, that is a new annual accountant’s fee; for a trust whose deed or accountant already produces statements, it changes little. The incremental cost depends on what your trust does now.

A new annual return, with a fee

This has no equivalent in the current law at all. It is closest to a CIPC annual return: a prescribed form, prescribed information, a prescribed fee, on a fixed annual cycle.

What has to go into the return is not in the Bill — it is left to regulations. Neither is the fee. Both matter a great deal to whether this is a mild administrative chore or a real annual cost, and neither can be assessed from the Bill as published.

Fines you pay yourself

Under the current Act the Master’s tools are a demand to account and an investigation (s 16), removal of the trustee by the Master or the court (s 20), and — for the listed failures, including the beneficial-ownership duties — criminal prosecution, with a fine of up to R10 million or five years’ imprisonment on conviction (s 19). There is no administrative fine in between. The Bill introduces that middle gear — a compliance notice, followed by an administrative fine.

The notice comes first (cl 33). It must name what you failed to do, what you must do to fix it, and by when, and it must warn you that a fine may follow. It can be issued for five things: failing to give the Master your address and contact details, failing to account when asked, failing to submit financial statements, failing to file the annual return, and failing on beneficial ownership. Miss the notice and the Master may fine you (cl 34).

Then comes the sentence that should make every trustee sit up:

How much? The Bill does not say. Clause 34(11) would leave the Minister to prescribe the maximums by regulation, and cl 34(12) would allow different maximums for different failures. Those regulations do not exist, so the ceiling is genuinely unknown at this stage.

You can appeal a fine, but only to the Director-General of the Department of Justice, within 30 days (cl 34(5)). The Director-General may confirm, reduce or set aside the fine (cl 34(6)), and the Bill says that decision "is final" (cl 34(7)). There is no appeal to a court written into the Bill, and, as covered below, the express right to take the Master to court that exists in the current Act has not been carried across. That is not the same as losing court oversight altogether: a decision of the Master or the Director-General is administrative action, and judicial review under the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act remains available on its own grounds (unlawfulness, procedural unfairness, unreasonableness) and within its own time limit — a narrower remedy than the merits-based, evidence-taking relief the current Act gives.

Changing your deed would get harder

Amending a trust deed is routine — adding a beneficiary, replacing a trustee, fixing a clause that no longer works. Today the amendment must be made in the way the deed and the law allow — with the consents the deed requires, and with an eye on the rights beneficiaries may already have acquired — and the trustee then lodges it with the Master under section 4 of the current Act. Lodging is a filing step: it does not by itself make an amendment valid, and an amendment that the deed did not permit is not cured by being placed on the Master’s file. The Bill would put two further gates in front of lodging, and attach unusually sharp consequences to getting it wrong.

Gate one: you could not lodge an amendment at all unless your beneficial-ownership information was already lodged with the Master and up to date. Gate two: even once lodged, you could not act on the amendment until the Master had acknowledged the lodgement.

Read the consequences together and the exposure would be considerable. Act too early and the act would be invalid, you would be personally liable for any resulting loss, and it would be a criminal offence. The trigger is not your own conduct but the Master's — you would be waiting on an acknowledgement from an office that is not known for turnaround speed.

Ten days on beneficial ownership

The beneficial-ownership duty itself is not new — it came in on 1 April 2023 through the anti-money-laundering amendments, and is covered in full on beneficial-ownership registers. What would change is the tightness. The current wording asks only that the information be "kept up to date" — which already means updating it when the facts change, not once a year. The Bill would put a clock on it:

The definition of who counts would also widen. The current Act captures beneficiaries "referred to by name" in the deed. The Bill would extend it to beneficiaries who are identifiable although not named — which reaches into the class clauses that most family trust deeds use, like "my children and their descendants". If your register was built by reading off the named beneficiaries, it would need revisiting if this provision is enacted.

One more addition worth knowing: cl 35(7) would make it an offence, carrying up to R10 million or five years, for any person to give a trustee false information for the beneficial-ownership register. That would reach founders and beneficiaries, not just trustees.

Who may be a trustee

Three shifts here, and they all point the same way: it would become harder to be a trustee, and easier to stop being one against your will.

The independent trustee would become statutory

Twenty years ago the Supreme Court of Appeal told the Master to insist on an independent outsider in family trusts where control and enjoyment had collapsed into the same people:

The Bill would write that into statute — with a third requirement the court did not impose:

"Independent" and "related" would both be defined in statute for the first time. An independent trustee would have to be unrelated to the founder and every other trustee, have no personal interest in the trust property, and be able to exercise independent judgment. "Related" is drawn tightly:

Two degrees reaches parents, children, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, and the in-law equivalents. It does not reach an aunt, a nephew or a cousin. That is a workable line, and it is worth knowing before you choose someone to fill the independent seat.

A higher standard of care for professionals

The current statutory wording is flat — the care of "a person who manages the affairs of another", the same for everyone. Whether a court applying that wording to an attorney or accountant trustee would already expect more of them is a separate question the current Act does not answer in terms. The Bill would make the graded standard express:

Alongside it, cl 16 would introduce an express prudent-investor rule that the current Act does not spell out — trustees may invest as a prudent investor might, and must weigh fifteen listed factors including diversification, liquidity, inflation, the term of the trust and the tax effect. Keep the proposal and the present position apart: the current s 9 standard of care, the common law and the deed itself may already require trustees to invest carefully, so this is a proposed express statutory formulation rather than a duty arriving from nowhere. For a trust holding investments it would still be a real governance change, because it would create a written checklist your investment decisions could be measured against after the fact. Minute your reasoning now.

New ways to lose the job

The Master's power to remove a trustee would expand to cover business rescue, administration under the Magistrates' Courts Act, and — new and worth flagging — being placed under debt review under the National Credit Act (cl 26(2)(d)). Debt review is not insolvency, and plenty of otherwise capable people go through it. Under the Bill it would be a ground on which the Master may remove you as trustee of your own family trust.

Being removed — by a court (cl 26(1)) or by the Master (cl 26(2)(f)) — for failing to comply with the beneficial-ownership duty in cl 23(1) would also disqualify you from being authorised to act as a trustee (cl 9(1)(e)). The Chief Master would keep a public register of disqualified persons, but as drafted it covers only persons disqualified “in terms of an order of a court pursuant to this Act or any other law” (cl 9(8)(a)). A removal by the Master would therefore disqualify you without itself putting your name on that register.

Whether your trust is valid

The 1988 Act never said what makes a trust valid — that came from the common law. The Bill would codify it, and would state expressly one rule that the current statute does not spell out:

Do not read subsection (3) as meaning that a sole-trustee-sole-beneficiary trust is safe until the Bill commences. The essence of a trust is a separation between control and enjoyment — the point the Supreme Court of Appeal made in Parker — and an arrangement in which the only trustee is also the only beneficiary is already open to challenge under present trust law. The Bill would make the rule express and fix its consequence; it would not create the problem.

An invalid trust is not a technicality. What follows from a declaration — who owns the assets, what creditors can reach, and the estate-duty and capital-gains consequences — depends on the further order the court makes under subsection (4)(b) and on the facts; do not assume the assets simply revert to the founder as though nothing happened. Poorly drafted deeds, trusts where the beneficiaries were never properly identified, and trusts that have quietly ended up with one trustee who is also the only beneficiary are the ones to look at.

Two other limits would arrive in cl 3. A trust could no longer be used to hold damages awarded to a child or to someone who cannot manage their own funds — in motor vehicle accident or medical negligence matters, for instance — unless a curator ad litem had reported to the court recommending it, the court was satisfied the draft deed protects them, and the deed dealt properly with trustee remuneration. And trusts could not be used to administer property a community receives from the State.

Getting out, and winding up

Resignation would change shape. Today you resign by giving written notice, and it takes effect. Under the Bill you would notify the Master, the other trustees and the vested beneficiaries, prove you have done so, and then wait:

Termination would change too, and more fundamentally. Under the current law a trust comes to an end according to its deed and the common law. The Bill would make it an administrative event:

Subsection (2) is doing a lot of work. On its face a trust would not end when its deed says it ends, or when the last asset is distributed — it would end when the Master takes it off the register. If you are planning a wind-up that may straddle commencement, budget time for deregistration.

What stays the same

It is worth being clear about what the Bill would not do, because early commentary on any Bill tends to over-read it:

• Nothing about tax. The 45% flat rate, the conduit principle, section 7C on interest-free loans, attribution rules — all of that lives in the Income Tax Act and is untouched. See how trusts are taxed.
• No re-registration. Existing trusts continue, and existing letters of authority stand.
• Trust assets are still ring-fenced. Trust property remains outside the trustee’s personal estate — that is the current Trust Property Control Act’s s 12, not a Bill provision — and the separate trust bank account requirement stays (currently s 10). If the Bill is enacted, it would state expressly that the account be held in the trust’s own name.
• The court’s power to vary a deed survives largely as it is — that power is the current Act’s s 13, which the Bill would carry forward. A general duty on registered auditors to report material irregularities already exists outside the Trust Property Control Act; the Bill would add a trust-specific version of it at cl 30.
• Some things would get easier, if enacted. Electronic signatures and electronic copies would be expressly recognised, so lodging a trust deed would no longer need a notarially certified paper copy, and email would become a formal channel to the Master. Clause 14 would also give trustees the powers of an absolute owner where the deed is silent, which would quietly fix a lot of badly drafted deeds.

What to do now

Nothing in the Bill binds you yet, no commencement date exists, and the final wording may differ from the draft. The sensible steps are the ones that are worth taking under the law as it stands today — and which would also leave you better placed if the Bill is enacted in its present form.

1. Get your beneficial-ownership register genuinely right. It is already law, it carries the heaviest penalties today, and under the Bill it would gate deed amendments. Check specifically whether unnamed but identifiable beneficiaries — class clauses like "my descendants" — are captured: that is not required today, but it would be if cl 23 is enacted.
2. Have the deed reviewed for validity. Clear intention, identified property, identified beneficiaries or object, an appointed trustee, and a genuine separation between control and enjoyment — including no sole-trustee-sole-beneficiary overlap, which is already a problem under present law and which cl 4 would make express. This is the one item where the downside is not a fine but the loss of the structure.
3. Review any amendment you already know you want — on its own merits. Test it under the current deed and law: the consents it needs and its effect on beneficiaries’ rights. Lodging it with the Master does not by itself make it valid. Do not make an amendment merely to anticipate a draft whose final form and commencement remain unsettled.
4. Start preparing annual financial statements if you do not already. They may become compulsory (the exemption threshold is unknown), and a trust with clean accounts is easier to administer, defend against a SARS query, and hand over whatever happens to the Bill.
5. Keep your contact details with the Master current, including an email address. Under the Bill existing trustees would get one month from commencement (cl 7(3)); it is the cheapest item on the list either way.
6. Look at your trustee board. If every trustee is a beneficiary and every trustee is related, Parker already points to an independent trustee. If the trust also trades, decide whether you would rather choose an independent trustee than have the Master choose one under cl 10(4) if it is enacted.

The compliance guide covers the annual cycle as it stands today, and trustees' duties covers the standard of care.

What we raised, and what happens next

The comment period closed on 11 September 2026. These are the points that most affect ordinary trusts and that we put in writing; they remain the issues to watch when a revised Bill appears.

• The express right to take the Master to court has been dropped. Section 23 of the current Act lets anyone aggrieved by an authorisation, appointment, removal or decision of the Master apply to court, with the court able to consider the merits and hear evidence. The Bill has no equivalent. The only appeal it creates is against an administrative fine, to the Director-General, whose decision it calls "final". Removal by the Master under cl 26(2) has no stated route of challenge at all. Judicial review under PAJA would remain — but it tests lawfulness, fairness and reasonableness on a 180-day clock, not the merits on evidence, so the concern is the loss of the express statutory route, not the disappearance of court oversight.
• Two subsections are both numbered 6(4) — and cl 35(1) would make contravening "section 6(4)" a five-year offence without saying which one it means.
• The financial-statement threshold does not exist. Nobody commenting on the Bill can tell whether their trust is exempt, because the number is left to a later Gazette notice. The same is true of the annual return fee and the maximum administrative fines.
• Clauses 20(3) and 20(5) pull against each other. One says a trust that was already preparing statements must continue; the other grants a threshold exemption that only carves out deeds requiring statements. On the stricter reading, voluntarily keeping good accounts is penalised. Either way, it needs clarifying.
• Resignation depends on the Master's turnaround. Tying the effective date of a resignation to receipt of an acknowledgement leaves a trustee bound, and exposed, for as long as the Master's Office takes.
• Ten days is short for lay trustees to notice a change, update a record and lodge it — particularly where the trigger is something like a beneficiary moving house.

Written comments went to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development by 11 September 2026. The full invitation is on the Department of Justice website, and the Bill itself is on the same site as gazetted in Government Gazette 55166 (the Fiduciary Institute of Southern Africa also announced its publication). These provisions are proposals, not current duties. We will update this analysis when a revised Bill, an enactment or a commencement notice becomes available.

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