Reporting a deceased estate at the Cape Town Master’s Office means working inside a five-hour window. The office serves the public from 08h00 to 13h00 and does not reopen in the afternoon, so a first visit — the one where staff check your original documents and tell you what is missing — has to happen in the morning. That single constraint drives everything else on this page. The second thing to settle before you go is whether Cape Town is even the right office. Jurisdiction over a deceased estate is fixed by where the deceased was living in the twelve months before death, not by where you live or where the death happened, so an estate belonging to another province cannot be reported here. Cape Town is the Western Cape’s Master’s Office, which at least makes that question simpler than in provinces served by two offices.
Official task and support route
- Switchboard: 021 832 3000
- Guardian’s Fund enquiries: 021 832 3014 — a separate direct line, and the one to use where the estate involves an heir who is a minor
- Physical address: Dullah Omar Building, 45 Castle Street, Cape Town
- Postal address: Private Bag X9018, Cape Town, 8000
- Email: the department publishes only the head of office’s personal address for Cape Town rather than a general office mailbox, so the switchboard or an in-person visit is the practical route.
Since 10 October 2023 the department’s deceased estate online registration system has operated at Master of the High Court offices, so ask on the switchboard whether your report can be started online before committing to a trip into the city centre.
What you need before contacting
- Confirmation that Cape Town has jurisdiction — where the deceased lived for the twelve months before death.
- The will, or knowledge that there is none. An estate is administered under the will, or failing a valid will, under the Intestate Succession Act 81 of 1987, with the procedure set by the Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965.
- Your own identity document and the original documents relating to the estate, not copies alone.
- Whether any heir is a minor. If so, the Guardian’s Fund becomes involved and the direct line above is the faster route for that part of the matter.
Step-by-step contact process
- Phone 021 832 3000 early in the morning session to confirm jurisdiction and what to bring, rather than travelling in on an assumption.
- Ask whether the estate can be reported through the online registration system.
- If attending in person, arrive with enough of the 08h00 to 13h00 window left for documents to be checked while you wait.
- If reaching Castle Street is impractical, lodge at your nearest Magistrate’s Office instead — all have been designated service points for the Master since 5 December 2002.
- Record the estate reference number issued to you. Every later call, follow-up and complaint depends on it.
Report early rather than waiting. On death the estate is frozen and nobody may draw on the deceased’s bank accounts or deal with estate assets without the Master’s permission — and where the couple was married in community of property the joint estate freezes too, which the department acknowledges often causes hardship for a surviving spouse.
Escalation route
Complaints about a Cape Town estate stay inside this office until it has been exhausted, and the department expects the order to be followed: the Assistant Master handling the estate, then the Deputy Master, then the Head of Office. Only after those three does the matter go to the Office of the Chief Master on 012 406 4804, where a named complaints management contact is published. Starting at the national office skips the people holding your file and does not speed anything up.
Sources
The telephone numbers, addresses, office hours, legislation references and escalation sequence on this page were read from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development’s official Master contacts and deceased estates pages at justice.gov.za on 30 August 2026. Officials’ personal email addresses published there are not reproduced. The department warns that chiefmaster.co.za is not an official Master’s website. Confirm against justice.gov.za before travelling.