First rule – Don’t ask AI to draft the trust deed.
Second rule – Don’t ask an attorney to draft the trust deed.
Third rule – You only need one trust despite what the trust pedlars tell you.

Get those three things right and you stand a chance of getting the whole job right.

There are numberous documents that have to be completed.

Then, if you are resident within the juristiction of the Pretoria or Johannesburg Masters of the High Court, the application must be made online, a laborious and frustrating process. The website is so slow, it dumps you for inactivity because it is inactive!

Also you have to enter the same information over and over again. First, the full details of the Founder, then of the Trustees (all of them including the Founder), then of the named Beneficiaries (all of them including the Founder). If you are well prepared, it will take you anything from 1 1/2 hours to three hours. Then you have to upload all the documents that carry exactly the same information. And the application will be rejected if there’s the slightest mismatch.

If the trust is to be registered at one of the other Offices, it will be a manual application and all documents have to be signed with wet ink. This is actually the easier route, but you may have to pay a Corresondent attorney to do the submission and follow up.

Good luck!

Your alternative is to engage a professional to do the entire job.