When the surviving spouse dies

The Story

At the end of the 19th century, my grandfather, Daniël Eliza Krynauw Otto, and his wife, Maria Petronella, settled on a farm at the very highest point of the Soutpansberg. Both were natives of the Cape Colony. Grandpa’s ancestors had already settled in the Cape on 1 April 1714. Grandma was a niece of General de Wet. Grandpa promptly renamed this little piece of paradise Ottosdal—a name the farm still bears today.

It took a long time for the pioneer and his eldest sons, after the Anglo-Boer War, to build a road from the foot of the mountain to the top. Once there, they began farming resourcefully. It was (and still is) a malaria-free but water-rich piece of land with limited arable soil, bush ticks, and giant mambas. The rugged ridges and green ravines teemed with leopards, which quickly discovered that a young ox was a much juicier meal than a tough old baboon.

Despite hardships, Grandpa (who in his 94 years visited a doctor only once) and Grandma (who lived to see 90 Christmases) raised 15 children on Ottosdal. The children were taught on the farm by a governess. Grandpa, Grandma, and their two daughters initially lived in a wagon and later in a humble yet elegant two-bedroom house. The rowdy boys shared a large outbuilding. One died young, another tragically in his thirties, and a third passed away from cancer in middle age. The other 12 all lived to a ripe old age.

And they didn’t eat lean meat or avoided full cream dairy products either, nor did a bottle of Oude Meester ever escape unscathed when the brothers, in later years, gathered from their isolated farms elsewhere in the Soutpansberg region for a visit. The last surviving child, a daughter, recently passed away at 99. Even at 95, she could effortlessly carry a sack of maize meal up the porch steps.

Grandpa built a watermill, planted beans, wheat, maize, potatoes, and tropical fruit on a modest scale, and kept cattle and poultry. He believed one should produce just enough to provide for everyone around you, buy necessary supplies, and save in case more land needed to be purchased. Late in life, he and Grandma realized they needed to make a will regarding the land. Like many farming families whose sweat, blood, and tears had soaked into the soil they worked, they wanted to preserve the land for future generations. This was long before the Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act.

When God-fearing people make a will, they cannot foresee that a large family might produce the occasional divorce or an uneducated but clever swindler. Nevertheless, the two elders stipulated in their will that their 12 surviving children and a widowed daughter-in-law would inherit the farm in equal shares. Heirs living on the land had rights “to grazing, water, and fields.” Uncle Bennie inherited the homestead on condition that he cared for the elderly couple until their deaths. (Legally, this merely meant he had a right of habitation—what the Romans called habitatio.) No heir could sell their share to a non-heir unless the majority of heirs consented.

However, one crucial clause was missing—an omission that would later taint the drinking water. There was no provision shielding married heirs’ inheritances from community property. Today, this is standard in wills. Since people back then often married in community of property, it meant some outsiders became one-twenty-sixth owners of the land. But that’s not the end of the story.

In the late 1960s, Gerhardus Petrus Otto entered the scene. A grandson of Grandpa and Grandma, he had a passion for the now-declining farm. He began a lengthy process that the Land Bank never anticipated. With his father, Uncle Fanie, and the wholehearted support of some of the elderly heirs, he decided to buy the farm. Yet, obtaining consent from the other heirs was a painstaking ordeal.

You see, apart from the community-property issue, the heirs were now all elderly. Just as Gerhard made progress negotiating with a bunch of stubborn descendants who had the blood of the Voortrekkers in their veins, an heir would pass on, and the process would restart with their heirs. The law firm in Pietersburg handling the transactions later had files on Ottosdal stacked five biblical cubits high on their shelves.

To make matters worse, some heirs were happy to consent to others selling their shares but reluctant to sell their own—unless the price was right, thank you very much. So it happened that cousin Gerhard ended up paying the last three heirs more than the other ten combined.

At one point, the lawyers discovered that one heir’s spouse had never consented to selling their one-twenty-sixth share—and this spouse had vanished years earlier. After a long search, they found out he/she had died in a distant place without their children’s knowledge and without leaving a will. Alas, an estate was opened, and suddenly all their children were co-owners of a one-twenty-sixth share. The pittance they could get from selling it might barely cover a deposit on a new Datsun SSS or a hifi system, but you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, do you?

One could go on, but Gerhard finally became the owner of the land—after 18 years. And he grew old in the process.

In 1952, as Grandpa lay dying, he asked Uncle Bennie: “What’s going to happen to me now, my son?” Uncle Bennie replied: “Eternal life, Pa.” To which Grandpa responded: “Oh, yes,” and peacefully passed away.

I’ve often wondered if the angels ever informed Grandpa, while he played the concertina on the clouds above, about all the drama his and Grandma’s will had caused.

The farm Ottosdal is not currently for sale…

(Landbouweekblad, 7 August 2009)