Towards best practice in the actuarial assessment of claims for maintenance against deceased estates

Abstract

This paper begins to record best practice in the actuarial assessment of claims for maintenance against deceased estates in South Africa. Although this is a small field of actuarial practice, it is in the public interest that generally accepted standards be agreed upon. The paper applies an actuarial quality framework to identify aspects of the field, and then populates each aspect from the actuarial and legal experience respectively of the authors, and their interactions with other practitioners. KEYWORDS  Maintenance claims; deceased estates; surviving spouses; duty of support