The Keyholder® Advantage - Your information to the right people at the right time

Protecting Your Critical Information

Create your important legal documents. At LegalWills.co.za, we help you to prepare a number of important documents. You can create a Last Will and Testament, and your Advance Directives. These are critical documents to have in place.

We also allow you to prepare important supplementary documents. You can express your funeral wishes using our MyFuneral™ service, and even upload documents to a digital repository through our MyVault™ service. You may have even taken the time to document important information through our MyLifeLocker™ service.

What if? But if something were to happen to you today, would your loved ones be ready to take over? Would they have a good sense of what exactly to do next?

A better way. There used to be a time where we would prepare a letter and put it in a sealed envelope "only to be opened after I am gone". Fortunately, technology allows us to do better than this.

The Keyholder® Solution

The responsibility. If you have appointed a representative through a Power of Attorney, or named an Executor in your Will, they will have the responsibility to take over your affairs at the appropriate time. They may have to pay bills on your behalf, or, in the case of an Executor, they would have to gather up your entire "estate" (all of your assets).

This is an extremely difficult task. But you may not want to share the details of your financial assets whilst you are alive. You need to get this information to the right people, at the right time, and not before.

Use our Keyholder® system. Using our MyKeyholder™ service you are able to name specific trusted individuals and give them access to key information within your account.

For example, your Power of Attorney representative may need access to information about your subscriptions, or mobile phone contract, all contained within the MyLifeLocker™ service.

Your Executor will need access to your financial assets, and online account login credentials. You may have included this information within MyVault™.

Beneficiaries within your Will may want to see a copy of the document, so you can grant them access to the your Will, and even write messages to each one of them using our MyMessages™ service.
Your Keyholders® can login using their unique Keyholder® ID and gain access to the information that they need.

It's FREE. The MyKeyholder™ service is absolutely free. We have found that many Will writers and lawyers do nothing but give you a 4 page Last Will and Testament and charge you thousands of rands for the privilege. Will writers and other online services do not address the most important step in resolving your estate: finding and gathering your assets. We hear from loved ones who don't even get to the first step of finding the Last Will and Testament!

It works. At LegalWills.co.za, we feel that our Keyholder® system is a critical addition to our service that allows your Will to perform its intended function.

The Security of Your Data

You can store a lot of sensitive information at LegalWills.co.za. But we protect all of it until the right people access it at the right time.

You can name up to 20 trusted Keyholders® to access different pieces of information, such as your Last Will and Testament, funeral wishes, private messages, files in your digital vault, and a detailed list of your assets in the MyLifeLocker™ service.

Each Keyholder® is given a unique Keyholder® ID that determines precisely what information they can see.

Until this time, we encrypt and protect this information using industry leading security and privacy tools.
View Descriptions of our Services
View Descriptions of our Services
Go to the Home Page
Go to the Home Page

How It Works

When you create a Will or legal document at LegalWills, you can designate up to 20 different Keyholders®. Your chosen Keyholders® will be given the trust and power to unlock specific information within your account such as health care directives, funeral wishes, final messages, uploaded files, Power of Attorney, or Last Will and Testament.

You can also implement security mechanisms to prevent premature access to these documents. The entire process of creating your Will and other legal documents at LegalWills is seamless and iterative, meaning you can continue to make changes until you're happy with the final product.
Click. Print. Sign.

It's really that easy.

LegalWills.co.za Scales Logo

Create Your Documents in Five Easy Steps

file
Create Your Documents

Creating your documents is quick and easy with LegalWills. Simply fill out the required fields and proceed to the next step.

key
Select Your Keyholders®

Entrust up to 20 individuals to unlock your wishes when the time is right.

pencil
Edit Your Documents for Up To One Year for Free

Make any changes to your documents using our online service.

lock
Keyholders® Request Access

When the time is right, your selected Keyholders® will have the ability to unlock your wishes.

folder
Documents are Released to Keyholders®

When the time comes and your Keyholders® request access to your documents, your wishes will be entrusted in their hands.

View Sample Will
 

Frequently Asked Questions

There is absolutely no legal requirement to use the services of a lawyer to prepare your Will.

The law requires that the Will is written on a piece of paper and then signed by you in the presence of two witnesses. Once it is signed and witnessed, it becomes a legal Last Will and Testament.

If you need legal advice, you should secure the services of a lawyer, but most people do not need legal advice to prepare a Will. Especially if they are using a service like the one at LegalWills.co.za.
When you write your Will with a lawyer, you are paying for their training, so that if you needed custom clauses written for unique situations, they would probably be able to do this for you. However, most Wills do not require unique new clauses to be written, and the vast majority of Wills are a compilation of known legal "precedents".

Most lawyers use Will writing software to prepare Wills, and we use that exact same software, but give you direct access to it. You should really be asking why a lawyer charges R2,000 for about an hour's work.

If you have unusual circumstances, such as a child with special needs, then you may need legal advice. But for the vast majority, you would be paying premium rates for legal advice that you don't need.

There are no other payments required to prepare your legal Will. You can have a legal Will in your hands for R499 with nothing else to pay, ever.

What other options are there?
If you wish, you can have your Will reviewed by one of our lawyers for R999. Most people do not need this, and would not benefit from it, but if you have selected an option such as "None of the above. Let me describe in detail how to distribute my estate.", then you may want to consider this.

Your Will must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. If you do not have access to a printer, we can print it for you and mail it out. The cost for this is R99, but again, most people do not need this option.

We also offer other services like MyLifeLocker™ and a Living Will. They are not required, but they may be useful to you depending on your situation.

What about document storage?
We do not store physical documents, but we allow you to maintain an account with us if you want to update your document in the future.

The Will service costs R499. With this payment, you are able to prepare your Will. It also gives you one year of unlimited updates to the document. You are able to print the document as often as you wish during that first year. You can download it as a PDF or Word file, but to make your document a legal Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. The online version is there for your convenience only.

If you choose not to maintain an account with us after the first year, your initial payment is all you will ever pay. We do not keep credit card details on file and cannot automatically charge beyond this initial payment.

If you wish, you can choose to store your documents online for longer than a year, which will make it easier to make updates in the future to reflect any changes in your personal or financial situation (rather than returning to a lawyer each time). This is of course optional, but it does make the process of maintaining your document more convenient. R119 will give you one additional year of updates, or you can purchase multiple years: 5 years at R299, 10 years at R399, 25 years at R799 (R32 per year).

Every time you make an update to your Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses again. If you choose not to maintain an account with us, you will always have your printed, signed document. If you don't need to make changes to that document, it will last you for the rest of your life, whether or not you have an account with us.

What happens if I don't maintain an account, and then in a few years I need to update it?
If your account has not been touched in years, and it is inactive, we reserve the right to remove the account. You will receive an email notification that your account might be removed. However, in practice, we have never actually removed any accounts in our over 24 years of operation.

So, in all likelihood, you will be able to simply login to your account and pay R119 to reactivate it. This will give you one year of unlimited updates from the date of payment. (You will not have to pay for your inactive years.)

Our answer is different depending on what you are comparing us to.

The service at LegalWills.co.za is significantly better than a blank form Will kit that you can buy on Amazon or WHSmiths. These blank kits do not check for errors, allow you to do things you are legally not allowed to do, and rarely cover backup scenarios. They are actually the most difficult way to prepare a well drafted Will.

We provide the same quality documents as an estate planning lawyer – often word-for-word identical, because we use the same software that they use. We've just adapted it to make it easier to understand, and given you direct access to it. Therefore, you can create a lawyer grade Will, but from the comfort of your own home at less than a tenth of the price.

When compared to other online services, we have honest, up-front pricing that is better than any equivalent service. We also believe that we have the highest quality service online today. In all the time that we have been in business, never once has one of our Wills had an issue going through the probate process. We also offer best-in-class phone and email support if you get stuck.

Some other highlights:

  • Help text every step of the way.   Every page of our service has additional help text to answer your questions. If you get stuck, send us an email and we can help.

  • Create your Will from anywhere at any time.   Our service works on any computer, phone or tablet. Which means you can create or update your Will in the middle of the night in Timbuktu if you need to.

  • Unlimited updates.   If you write your Will with a lawyer, it could be out of date by the time you get home. You don't face that issue with LegalWills.co.za. If your circumstances change, simply login to your account, update your document, and sign your new Will. There is no charge for updates as long as you maintain a membership.

  • Professional reviews by a lawyer.   Our service works for the vast majority of situations, but on occasion people have unusual circumstances and need the reassurance of a legal professional's eye. We offer this as an option.

  • Our other services.   We don't just do Will writing. We offer a complete portfolio of services that will help you to plan your estate. We have the LifeLocker® executor tool, that allows you to document all of your personal details and assets, and MyVault™ that lets you upload important files. Together with our Keyholder® mechanism, you can be assured that the right information gets into the right hands at the right time (and not before).

  • Privacy and security.   We do not store any information as plain text. We do not store Wills in our database. All of your information is encrypted on our servers. Nobody can access it except you and your designated Keyholders® at the appropriate time. Furthermore, we do not share, trade or sell any of your data with third parties whatsoever.

Let Us Answer Your Questions

See All Questions
Creating a Will and other legal documents doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. We have hundreds of articles that simplify the process.
Browse Our Blog
Feel free to contact us during office hours, or get answers instantly with our online chatbot.
Contact Us