As a financial planner I deal with clients who are always looking for the most efficient ways of transferring their wealth.
In this article I want to explore a possible opportunity that often gets missed.
The importance of estate planning is often — most unfortunately —something that does not emerge fully until after we die.
But effective estate planning can be about making deliberate financial decisions while you are still alive — including helping the people you love benefit from your wealth sooner.
One often-overlooked opportunity is SA’s annual donations-tax exemption. For the 2026/27 tax year, an individual can donate up to R150,000 per year without donations tax being payable.
For a couple, this potentially means R300,000 per year can be gifted, assuming both individuals qualify and make their own donations.
Consider a parent with substantial assets who wants to assist their children financially.
Instead of waiting until death for the children to inherit, the parent could consider gifting R150,000 a year to a child.
Over several years, this can become a meaningful transfer of wealth.
There is another potential benefit: money that is genuinely given away is no longer available to form part of the donor’s ordinary asset base.
For individuals with estates large enough to attract estate duty, reducing the value of assets held personally during their lifetime can potentially reduce the eventual estate-duty exposure.
However, this is where proper planning becomes important. Not every donation simply disappears from the estate-duty calculation.
SA's estate-duty legislation contains provisions dealing with deemed property, including certain donations, so the timing, structure and circumstances of the gift matter.
The bigger estate-planning principle is therefore simple: don’t wait until death to start transferring wealth.
Helping children with education, a deposit on a home, investments or other meaningful financial goals during your lifetime can provide benefits when they are needed most — while potentially forming part of a broader strategy to manage future estate duty.
Estate planning is not simply about distributing wealth after death. It is about creating a deliberate strategy for how, when and to whom your wealth is transferred.
A conversation with a qualified financial adviser and tax practitioner can help determine whether lifetime gifting is appropriate for your particular circumstances.
Blueprint Finance Brokers in East London owner Scott Roebert has been a financial planner for 25 years, specialising in bespoke investments and retirement planning. You can find him on Facebook