Appointment Of Administrator- Dickson Jere

Appointment Of Administrator
By Dickson Jere

I am back on this topic. We need urgent intervention to make changes to the law so that the process of obtaining Probate or Letters of Administration of the estate of the deceased is made quicker and cheaper.

Currently, there is chaos and our High Court is overwhelmed. It takes months to process these documents from the High Court with very few Judges under the Family Division of the High Court.

It is very expensive to process Probate in Zambia and in most cases require a lawyer. You also need money to advertise in the newspaper before even making an application to Court.

LAZ has just released interesting statistics on this matter. It has revealed that over 2,500 probate cases were filed in the High Court this year alone. This is massive number that cannot be dealt with by few Judges under the Family Court who also have other matters and trials to attend to.

“It was suggested that the issuance of Letters of Administration should be handled by Probate Registrars to ease the work of the Family Court Judges,” LAZ suggestion reads in part.

I am glad that LAZ has raised this issue and made some suggestions on how to help people access these facilities quickly as they resolve the estate of their deceased relatives.

However, I take a further view that the solution lies in the expanding the jurisdiction of Local Courts and Subordinate Courts to handle the estate below the value of ZMW500,000. Most villagers only have access to Local Court as the High Court are situated in Provincial capitals only.

Registrars, however, are also only found in the High Court registries. So, it will still mean that those in far flung areas will need to travel to provincial centres to access this facility. Transport costs, accommodation and all is well over what most of these villagers leave in their estate. The trouble is that you need this paper to access NAPSA benefits of your deceased or indeed to make follow up on money left such as Airtel account.

We just need to make urgent amendments to the law to accommodate the poor who cannot afford legal representation as well as traveling to Provincial Centres to access the High Court.