Worst Executors Ever - Absolute Nightmare!

Our late father was convinced by his Sanlam broker, months before his passing, to make them the executor of his estate in his will.

It has been an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE! Their documentation is faulty, and I don't mean a small typo or such - they literally listed items that has never been a part of my late father's estate - and then took them months to correct this (including a few 'failed' attempts where they literally sent the exact same, faulty documents).

There are vehicles in the estate that my widowed mother is still using, and they allowed the licenses to expire and now there are huge penalty fines on these because again, they keep sending faulty documentation or are delayed with this. The issue here is that we are supposedly responsible for the payment of the renewal, which is 100%, but they need to draw up the documentation and this is where they messed up. It has now been 7 months since the licenses have expired and we only received the final, corrected documents this week.

There is a property in the estate, the sale of which they have completely botched and we have lost potential buyers because of their negligence. The process is now also being stretched out unnecessarily and they keep prioritizing the interest of a third party above that of the estate.

On top this, the estate is extremely simple and straight forward to manage, based on the professional opinion of a lawyer we approached. And yet, they are charging us the full fee instead of the minimum - which is supposedly what should be charged for estates with this level of simplicity.

Then finally, we have approached the Sanlam arbitrator on SO many occasions and they have not ONCE gotten back to us or assisted with this severe negligent management of the estate.

If you are reading this, please, NEVER EVER use Sanlam as your executor unless you want to prolong the agony of those you left behind.