What are the opening hours?

Monday 08:00 - 16:30 Tuesday 08:00 - 16:30 Wednesday 08:00 - 16:30 Thursday 08:00 - 16:30 Friday 08:00 - 16:30

De Klerk Turner Inc

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De Klerk Turner Inc

Attorneys & Notaries De Klerk Turner Inc is a trusted law firm and notaries based in Cape Town, South Africa.

We specialize in litigation, estate administration, notarial services, property law, and legal consulting. Located in the city centre, we offer tailored legal solutions with a client-focused approach. Whether you need help with wills and trusts, administration of estates, antenuptial contracts, curatorships, evictions, or property disputes, our experienced attorneys are here to guide you. At De Klerk Turner Inc, we are committed to exceptional service and securing the best outcomes for our clients in Cape Town and surrounding areas.

03/11/2026

The local government elections are tomorrow, Wednesday 4 November. It is a public holiday, and our offices will be closed.

We are open again as usual on Thursday 5 November.

Whoever you are voting for, vote.

27/10/2026

What does a first consultation cost? Half our standard hourly rate.

That is not a discount and it is not a promotion. A first consultation has a narrower purpose than an ordinary attendance: for us to understand the matter properly, and to gather enough to quote you sensibly on the rest of it.

We publish the figure because of something we hear constantly: people put off phoning an attorney because they do not know whether the phone call itself is going to cost them something. That hesitation is expensive, and it is almost always more expensive than the consultation would have been.

One more thing, while we are being direct about money.

We would far rather tell you in that first meeting that you do not have a matter worth running, than take an instruction you should never have given us. Both conversations take the same hour. Only one of them is worth having.

20/10/2026

A deceased estate is not reported to the High Court. It is reported to the Master of the High Court.

Two different institutions. Two different buildings. And the confusion between them sends grieving families to the wrong door more often than you would believe — usually on a day they had to take off work.

In Cape Town the Master sits in the Dullah Omar Building, 45 Castle Street. We are on Lower Long Street, a few blocks away.

We mention the geography because it changes what we can actually offer. When a document has to go in, someone from this office can walk it in. When something comes back needing correction, it does not sit in an inbox for a week before anybody notices.

To be clear about what that is and is not: it is not a promise about how quickly the Master will deal with an estate. That is not ours to promise. It is a statement about how quickly we move on our side of it.

When you come in, the checklist we give our own clients tells you what to bring — free, nothing to fill in, and yours to pass on to anyone who needs it.

dkt-inc.co.za/guides/deceased-estate-reporting-checklist

15/10/2026

Two rooms. The same dispute. Very different processes.

Litigation happens in a public court, in front of a judge nobody chose.

Arbitration happens in front of an arbitrator the parties appoint between them. Not in open court.

Most people discover which room they are in at the worst possible moment — after the dispute has started, when somebody reads the contract properly for the first time. A clause signed two years ago already decided it.

You will find a great deal of confident writing about which one is faster and which is cheaper. We are not going to add to it. We would not control either answer, and an estimate we cannot enforce is worth nothing to you on the day it is missed.

What is worth knowing is that they are genuinely different processes — and the time to understand the difference is before you sign, not after something has gone wrong.

dkt-inc.co.za

13/10/2026

We do not take appointments as liquidators, trustees of insolvent estates or business rescue practitioners. That is deliberate, and it is worth explaining why.

We bring and oppose liquidation and business rescue applications in the High Court. That is the litigation side of insolvency, and it is what we do.

But those are appointments, and an appointment carries duties that run to other people. Both roles are necessary. Neither of them is your attorney.

So when you are the creditor watching a debtor company quietly move, or the company on the receiving end of an application you believe is an abuse of process, the question to ask is whose duty runs to you alone.

Ours does. We take the court proceedings, and nothing about our position is divided.

One practical note, and it is the one that matters most: the useful conversation happens before a creditor moves, not after.

dkt-inc.co.za

08/10/2026

Most people have met one kind of bond. The one over a house.

There is another kind, and it has nothing to do with land.

A notarial bond is registered over movable property. Equipment. Stock. Machinery. Vehicles. The things a business actually runs on rather than the building it runs in.

What separates it from an ordinary agreement is how it is signed. It has to be executed in front of a notary public, and it is then lodged for registration in the Deeds Office. It is not something two parties can sign between themselves over a table.

That is the same reason a notary turns up for an antenuptial contract. The attestation is not a formality added on top of the document — it is what gives the document its character.

We have a notary in this office, which means it is work we do rather than refer out.

dkt-inc.co.za

06/10/2026

Most people have never had a reason to find out what a notary actually is. Here it is, briefly.

It is not an attorney with a fancier stamp. It is a separate admission with its own examination, sat on top of the attorney's qualification. Plenty of firms do not have one.

Some documents are executed before a notary rather than simply signed — antenuptial contracts, notarial bonds, notarial leases, certain servitudes. The notary attests the document, and that attestation is what gives it its character.

Which is why, if your firm does not have one, you get sent across town to a stranger for half an afternoon, with your documents, at a time that suits them.

We have a notary public in-house. It is a small thing that turns out to matter on exactly the days you would rather it did not — getting married, securing a facility, dealing with an estate.

dkt-inc.co.za

29/09/2026

If you have never instructed an attorney before, here is what to bring to the first meeting.

The documents, in whatever state they are in. The agreement, if there is one. The correspondence — all of it, including the messages you regret sending, especially those. A rough sequence of what happened and when, even if it is handwritten on the back of something else.

That is the whole list.

You do not need to organize it. You do not need to summarize it. You do not need to work out in advance which parts matter — that is the job, and we are better at it than you would expect, because we do it every week and you have done it once.

A lot of people delay a first appointment because they feel they should get their affairs in order first. It is completely understandable and it is exactly backwards. The tidying is not the hard part.

What slows a first meeting down is never disorganized papers. It is missing ones.

dkt-inc.co.za

22/09/2026

Heritage Day, this Thursday.

We practise from Lower Long Street, in a part of Cape Town where the courts, the Master's Office and the Deeds Office are all within a walk of each other — and of us.

It is easy to treat that as an accident of where the office is. It is not. A great deal of what we do goes better because a person can walk in, in the same morning, and ask a question of someone's face rather than sending an email into a queue and waiting.

Heritage Day is a good moment to say that this city is not just where the firm is registered. It is how the firm works.

Wishing everyone a good Heritage Day — and a good long weekend to those taking one.

15/09/2026

Here is a question we ask that catches people out.

Not "do you have a will" — most people do. **Where is it, right now, and does anybody else know?**

The two answers we hear most often are "somewhere at home" and "I think the bank has it." Neither is much use to a family in the week after a death, when the original document is what has to go in and nobody can find it.

A will nobody can locate causes very much the same problem as no will at all — and it causes it at the worst possible moment, to people who are already dealing with enough.

It is a ten-minute problem to solve while you are alive and a considerable one to solve afterwards.

One practical option, and we will be straight about the condition attached to it: **where we are appointed as executor in the will, we hold the original in safe custody at no charge.** No storage fee, no annual anything. The reason we can do that is that we are the ones who will be winding the estate up, so the document needs to be with us in any event.

If that does not suit you, that is completely fine — but then tell somebody where it is. That is the part that actually matters.

dkt-inc.co.za

Address

Suite 4, 12th Floor, 35 Lower Long Street
Cape Town
8000

Opening Hours

Monday	08:00 - 16:30
Tuesday	08:00 - 16:30
Wednesday	08:00 - 16:30
Thursday	08:00 - 16:30
Friday	08:00 - 16:30

Website

http://www.dkt-inc.co.za/

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