Most families assume that when someone dies, their bank account simply switches off. It’s a reasonable assumption, and it’s wrong. In practice, a deceased person’s bank account can carry on transacting for weeks, sometimes months, after they’ve passed away. It does not stop when the person dies.
Understanding why this happens, and what the law currently allows you to do about it, matters more in 2026 than it used to, because the rules on both sides of this problem have just changed.
The account freezes on notification, not on death
This is important for all persons managing a deceased estate to be aware of. A bank has no way of knowing that an account holder has died unless someone tells it. Death doesn’t automatically trigger their bank account to freeze. The account only stops moving once the bank has been formally notified, typically with a certified death certificate, the deceased’s ID, and proof of the account details, and has had time to action that notification internally.
This is also important to consider when it comes to credit cards. The interest rate on accredit cards is generally quite high, and can continue to run well into the estate administration process if there is no credit life insurance on that credit facility.
Between the date of death and the date the bank actually places a hold on the account, everything continues as normal: airtime and insurance debit orders go off, subscriptions renew, and in some cases even card transactions can still clear if someone else has access to a linked card. Depending on how quickly the family reports the death and how efficiently the bank processes it, that gap can run from a few days to several weeks.
Why the debit orders themselves don’t just stop
A debit order is a standing instruction from a service provider, collected through the banking system on a mandate the account holder gave while alive. Neither the service provider nor the banking system automatically knows the mandate holder has died and so the instruction simply keeps being
presented for payment each month until someone actively intervenes, either by freezing the account or by cancelling the debit order with the service provider directly.
Claiming a refund just got harder: the new 60-day rule
Since April 2026, South Africa’s banks have moved to a standardised 60-day window for disputing debit orders across the National Payment System. Before this change, some collection instruments could be disputed for up to a year after the fact; the automated dispute process previously ran for 40 days. Both of those have now been replaced with a single, tighter 60-day rule.
Within 60 days of a debit order being processed, a bank can reverse it through an automated dispute process without needing the service provider to defend the deduction. Once that 60-day window closes, the automated route falls away entirely and the executor or family is left to negotiate a refund directly with the company that collected the money — which, as most executors discover, is a far slower and far less certain process.
The real obstacle: banks want a Letter of Executorship first
Notifying the bank of a death is only the first step. To actually close accounts, formally instruct the bank, or pursue refunds on the estate’s behalf, the executor needs legal standing. This means producing either a Letter of Executorship (for estates worth more than R250,000) or a Letter of Authority (for smaller estates), both issued by the Master of the High Court under the Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965.
Most banks will freeze the account and stop new payments once they’re notified of the death. But when it comes to substantive matters, such as closing the account, releasing funds, or actively pursuing a debit order refund on the estate’s behalf, the executor typically cannot act until that letter is in hand. That is where families run into the second, and often more painful, half of this problem.
Two clocks, running against each other
The Master’s Office aims to issue Letters of Executorship or Authority within roughly 15 working days of receiving a complete application. In practice, that target is frequently missed by a wide margin. Reporting from August 2026 described the Johannesburg Master’s Office in particular as struggling
under a growing backlog, with no permanent Master appointed since 2024, multiple vacant posts, and cases where practitioners waited well over a year for letters that should have taken two weeks. Files piled in corridors, unreliable online systems, and reports of intermediaries offering to “speed things along” for a fee were all part of the picture painted by attorneys working the system daily.
What families and executors can do in the meantime
1Report the death to every bank as soon as possible, in writing, even before the Letter of Executorship is available. A prompt notification is what starts the freeze — waiting for the letter first only lengthens the exposure window.
2Keep a single, dated log of every notification, reference number, and response. If a refund claim is eventually contested, this record is often what settles it.
3Where the Master’s Office delay is becoming the limiting factor, get an attorney experienced in deceased estates involved early. There are escalation routes within the Master’s process, and a practitioner who works these queues regularly can often move a stalled file faster than a family member can on their own.