Wills and Inheritance in Malawi (2026): What Happens to Your Money When You Die

There is a version of your estate that has nothing to do with land or cattle. It is your current account, the payout on your life policy, the gratuity and leave pay your employer still owes you, and any treasury bills you are holding. Malawian law has a single name for that bundle — institutional money — and it treats all of it as part of your estate the moment you die.

What happens to it next turns almost entirely on one question: did you leave a valid will? If you did not, a statutory formula decides, and that formula is far more specific than most Malawians expect.

The law that governs this

The governing statute is the Deceased Estates (Wills, Inheritance and Protection) Act, Chapter 10:02 of the Laws of Malawi (Act No. 14 of 2011), which commenced on 19 August 2011 and repealed the old Wills and Inheritance Act.

Section 4 is the provision that changed everything. Except as the Act itself provides, no person is entitled under customary law to inherit any property a deceased person was entitled to at the date of death. Whatever the practice in a family or a village, this Act is the law that applies.

What is actually in your estate

Section 3 defines "inheritable property" to include all causes of action that survive you, your clothing, and institutional money — while excluding anything that passes to someone else by right of survivorship.

"Institutional money" is defined in unusually plain terms, and it reads as a list of the things most people never think of as inheritance at all:

• money on deposit or in a current account with a bank or similar institution;
• money due under any policy of insurance or assurance;
• money due under a provident fund or similar provision for employees;
• money by way of gratuity, terminal benefits, leave pay or otherwise under your terms of employment;
• money held by way of treasury bills or other government bonds;
• money due under a court order, or under the Workers' Compensation Act.

So if you hold treasury bills or government bonds, or your family is counting on a payout from your insurer, or your employer owes you a gratuity, all of it lands here.

If you die without a will: the formula

Section 16 is blunt. Die without a will valid under section 6 and there is an intestacy over everything you owned at death. Leave a will that does not dispose of all of it, and there is an intestacy over the remainder.

Section 17 then sets out how the estate is shared, in a fixed order:

1. Protection comes first. Members of the immediate family and dependants are protected from hardship so far as the available property allows. "Hardship" is defined — it means deprivation of the ordinary necessities of life at the standard the person enjoyed while you were alive, and for a child it expressly includes losing the education they could reasonably have expected.
2. Household belongings go to the spouse. Every spouse is entitled to retain all the household belongings of his or her household, before anything else is divided.
3. The remainder is divided between the surviving spouse or spouses, the children, and your parents.
4. Between spouse and children, shares turn on the special circumstances — wishes you expressed in front of reliable witnesses, education or basic necessities any of them already received from you, and contributions any of them made to a business or other property in the estate. There is a quiet but powerful presumption here: the surviving spouse is treated as having contributed to the business unless a child proves otherwise. Absent special circumstances, spouses and children take equal shares.
5. Among the children, age counts in reverse. A younger child is entitled to a greater share than an older one, unless the children's interests require otherwise.
6. If there is no spouse and no child, the property goes to your dependants in equal shares.

Where a man leaves more than one female spouse living in different localities, each spouse and her children take from the property in their own locality and have no claim on property where another spouse lives — but that rule does not apply to an estate above the small-estate value, nor to institutional money, nor to private land. Where the spouses live in the same locality, shares are proportionate to contribution.

One more that matters and is widely misunderstood: re-marriage does not strip a surviving spouse of what they inherited — except for property on customary land, where title devolves to that spouse's children by the deceased on re-marriage.

If nobody in section 17 survives you, section 18 works down a ladder: grandchildren, then full-blood siblings, then half-blood siblings, then grandparents, then uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, then the nearest relatives by blood — and if none of them survive, the Government takes title.

Making a will that actually works

Section 6 sets a low bar, and homemade wills fail it constantly. A will must be in writing, signed by you in the presence of at least two competent witnesses, and those witnesses must sign in your presence and in the presence of each other. A competent witness is anyone of sound mind who is not a minor.

Then section 7 sets the trap that destroys more Malawian wills than any other single rule: a person who witnesses your signature — and that witness's spouse — takes no benefit under the will. They can still act as your executor, and a court can rescue a gift to an immediate-family witness under section 7(2) where there was genuinely nobody else available, the gift is fair, and there is no sign of fraud or undue influence. But the safe rule is simple: never let a beneficiary, or a beneficiary's husband or wife, be one of your two witnesses.

Three more rules worth knowing:

• Marriage revokes your will — automatically — unless the will was made in contemplation of that marriage (section 10).
• Divorce cancels gifts to your former spouse and their appointment as executor or guardian, unless the will says otherwise.
• A will cannot cleanly disinherit your immediate family. Under section 15, a court may order reasonable provision for a spouse or child the will failed to provide for, having regard to the nature of your property, the applicant's own means, their conduct towards you, and the circumstances of the other beneficiaries.

You can deposit the will for safe custody with the Registrar of the High Court, a District Commissioner or a magistrate — or, as section 8 expressly allows, with a bank, an insurer, a law firm, a provident fund administrator or your employer. A will nobody can find does you no good.

Getting the money released: what the family actually does

The last salary is immediate. Section 79 obliges an employer to pay the salary, wages, allowances or arrears for the pay period interrupted by the death — and the pay period before it, if still unpaid — directly to the surviving spouse, or if there is no surviving spouse, to the senior responsible family member known to be living with the deceased. No grant, no court order. That money may be applied to normal household expenses and to the funeral. Very few families know to ask for it.

Institutional money runs through the District Commissioner. Under section 63, a family member reports the death to the District Commissioner for the deceased's home or usual district, depositing the death certificate and the evidence that the money is payable. The DC verifies the amount and enquires whether a will disposes of it. If a will might, the family is directed to apply for an administration grant instead. If no will does, the DC refers the matter to court, the court certifies who the beneficiaries and creditors are and in what shares, and on the DC's request the bank, insurer or fund must send a separate cheque for each person within thirty days. A minor's share is paid to Government and held by the DC in a separate deposit account for that child. Section 63(6) puts the same referral duty directly on an employer, insurer or provident fund administrator.

A family agreement is allowed — but not for everything. Where all the adult members of the immediate family and dependants agree on how to distribute a small estate, section 61 lets them proceed by agreement, provided it is recorded at the District Commissioner's office. That route cannot be used for private land or for institutional money, and it never ousts the court: on any later application, the rights that apply are the ones the Act gives, not the ones the family agreed.

Land needs a grant. Section 62 makes any dealing with private land in a small estate unlawful until an administration grant is made under section 65. On an application for that grant, the court must notify the immediate family and any executors named in a will to attend, on a date not less than thirty and not more than sixty days after the notice is served.

Where there is no will, section 43 lets anyone who would inherit under sections 17 or 18 apply for letters of administration; where more than one applies, the court prefers greater and more immediate interests, and if nobody applies at all, a creditor may. Where a will's executors fail, section 39(2) sets the priority order, ending with the Administrator General as public trustee.

The small-estate line

A "small estate" is defined in section 3 as property not exceeding MK1,000,000 in value at the date of death, before any deduction for debts — or such higher amount as the Minister specifies by notice in the Gazette.

That MK1,000,000 is the figure in the Act as consolidated to 31 December 2014, and the kwacha has moved a great deal since. Treat it as the statutory starting point rather than today's certainty, and confirm the operative figure with the magistrate's court or your District Commissioner before assuming which procedure applies. It matters, because a small estate goes to a resident magistrate or a magistrate of the first grade under the simplified procedure described above, while anything larger goes to the High Court.

Property grabbing is a crime, not a family dispute

Section 84 is the provision the Act is partly named for. Anyone not entitled under a will or on an intestacy who takes possession of, grabs, seizes, diverts, deals in or disposes of estate property — or does anything with it that causes or is likely to cause deprivation or hardship to someone who is entitled — commits an offence.

The penalty is severe and largely non-discretionary: a fine of not less than the value of the property taken, and imprisonment for ten years. On top of the sentence the court shall order the property or its monetary value restored immediately to the people lawfully entitled, and may order the fine itself paid over to them or into the estate. A person convicted is disqualified from acting as an executor, administrator or guardian of any deceased estate in Malawi.

Section 80 adds a related rule: a person who, while sane, murders another takes nothing from that person's estate, and the beneficiaries are worked out as though the murderer had never been born.

A practical checklist

1. Write the will — in writing, signed by you, in front of two adults of sound mind who both sign in your presence and in each other's.
2. Choose witnesses who inherit nothing, and whose husbands or wives inherit nothing.
3. List the institutional money — every account, policy, provident fund, gratuity entitlement and holding of treasury bills — and say where the paperwork is.
4. Deposit the will somewhere findable, and tell one person where it is.
5. Re-do it after a marriage. Marriage revokes it.
6. Tell your family about section 79 — the last salary is payable to the surviving spouse straight away.
7. Keep the estate worth inheriting. Know what your savings are actually protected by (see is your money safe in a Malawian bank), and treat your pension and retirement provision as the largest single item most families will ever inherit. If your savings sit in an informal group rather than an institution, read village banks and SACCOs in Malawi — money held outside an institution is far harder for your family to trace and claim.

Frequently asked questions

Is a handwritten will valid in Malawi? Yes, if it meets section 6 — written, signed by you in front of at least two competent witnesses, who each sign in your presence and in one another's presence. There is no requirement that a lawyer draft it, and section 6(6) says a will is not invalid merely because it does not follow any form the Minister has prescribed.

Can my wife and children be cut out of my will? Not reliably. Section 15 lets a court order reasonable provision for a member of your immediate family for whom the will failed to provide.

Does my bank need a court order before releasing my account? Under section 63 the bank pays on a court certificate obtained through the District Commissioner, identifying each beneficiary and their share, and it must issue the cheques within thirty days of the District Commissioner's request.

My husband had another wife in a different district. What happens? Where the wives lived in different localities, each wife and her children take from the property in their own locality only. Where they lived in the same locality, shares are proportionate to contribution. Neither rule applies to institutional money, to private land, or to an estate above the small-estate value.

A relative took the household goods the day after the funeral. Is that just a family matter? No. Section 84 makes it a specific criminal offence carrying a fine of at least the value of the property and ten years' imprisonment, plus a mandatory order restoring the property, and disqualification from ever acting as an executor, administrator or guardian.

Sources

• Deceased Estates (Wills, Inheritance and Protection) Act, Chapter 10:02 of the Laws of Malawi (Act No. 14 of 2011), assented 18 August 2011, commenced 19 August 2011, consolidated to 31 December 2014, published by MalawiLII and the Laws.Africa Legislation Commons — sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 39, 43, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 79, 80, 84 and 89. The 31 December 2014 consolidation is the most recent point-in-time version MalawiLII publishes, and no amending Act is listed against it. Read in full on 5 September 2026.

Last reviewed: September 2026. General information, not legal or financial advice. Inheritance is applied case by case, and the small-estate ceiling may be raised by the Minister by notice in the Gazette — confirm the current position with a magistrate's court, your District Commissioner or a Malawian legal practitioner before relying on it.