Happy birthday, Niky 🎁

A plain-language rundown of what the WinDeed records actually say — so you can see it all in one sitting without having to read 200 pages of PDFs.

What I've been looking at is a third-party site called WinDeed. It doesn't have everything the Deeds Office has, but it's a great starting point — it pulls directly from the deeds registry on demand. I used the Michael Rahner Family Trust name and its IT number (IT 958/1984) to search for every property that has ever been in the Trust, including the ones that have already been sold between 2006 and 2026. What came back is a lot of evidence that is quite damning for the trustees. We will need to address this with them at some point.

Alongside this letter, I'm busy building a proper evidence site for us — a map that shows exactly where each property sits by erf number, and a card next to each parcel showing its current status: when it was sold, what it sold for, who the buyer was, and a direct link to the deed itself. Everything we need to prove that what we are seeing is, in fact, reality. The site is live already but it's not finished — I'm waiting on Seeff Properties (the estate agent company) to come back with the last pieces of information on the deeds that are currently in — or were historically on — the Trust. Once Seeff lands and I've done the final WinDeed pulls, the map will be exact and we'll be ready to walk any lawyer through it in one sitting.

The short version

Three big things, in order of how damning they are:

1. The 2019 Bardene sale was R54.7 million, not R42 million. The trustees told you R42M. The actual deed at the Deeds Office says R54,743,000. That's R12.7M under-declared to the two of us as beneficiaries, and R1.27M under-declared to Mommy specifically on her 10% Clause 7.1 share.
2. There was a R14 million sale in 2012 nobody told us about. Klipfontein 83 Portion 680. The Trust sold it 4 December 2012 to a company called Cloversgreen Inv Pty Ltd that was registered the same year as the sale. The trustees' own position — in Tania Del Grosso's email — is that only two properties were sold between 2006 and 2026. Portion 680 makes that a third. Mommy's 10% on it alone is R1.4M.
3. There's farmland the Trust still owns that was never mentioned. Two Klipfontein portions (565 and 841, together about 5.8 hectares of Pretoria farmland) are currently registered to the Trust. Neither has ever appeared in any communication from Tania or the trustees. They are hidden current assets.

I'll walk through each one below, with the evidence attached so you can see I'm not making it up.

Finding 1 — the 2019 Bardene sale

This is the sale Tania referenced in her letter. The number is wrong. The Deeds Office record states the purchase price as R54.7 million. Either the trustees declared less to us than they received, or there is money sitting somewhere that was never routed to the Trust's accounting. Either way, Mommy's share is R5.47M, not R4.2M.

There is one more thing worth knowing about Erf 1257 that is independent of our dispute but strongly suggests the sale was underpriced in the first place:

Finding 2 — the 2012 sale nobody told us about

"Only two Trust properties were sold between 2006 and 2026 — the 2019 Bardene erven and the 2026 Unit 28 Oaklane." — Tania Del Grosso, 15 October 2026 email on behalf of the trustees

Portion 680 makes that statement demonstrably false. It is a third sale. For R14 million. In 2012. To a company that was incorporated the same year as the sale — which is a pattern that lawyers notice.

There is a second Cloversgreen company at the Deeds Office with an older registration number (2003/018554/07) that holds two historic contracts from 2005 and 2006. Having two same-named companies, one old and one new-at-the-moment-of-sale, is the kind of thing that happens when someone wants a buyer entity that looks like it has a history but doesn't. I'm not calling it beneficial-owner laundering yet — I need the DO Person search on the directors to make that call — but it is on my list for the next WinDeed top-up.

The important point for right now: a R14M sale happened and we were told it didn't. Independent of any valuation argument, failing to disclose a R14M sale to the beneficiary is a per-se breach of the duty of honest accounting under section 9 of the Trust Property Control Act. One sale, undisclosed, is enough to open the whole trusteeship up to challenge.

Finding 3 — the farmland still sitting in the Trust

These two portions are not sales — they are current Trust assets. Neither has ever been mentioned to us in any communication. When Mommy eventually passes (long from now, God willing) these would form part of the Trust estate. They should be on the asset register you ask for from Tania.

They may also be relevant now, because if there has been any administrative activity (leases, servitudes, farming income) on them, that income flows through the Trust, and Mommy has rights under the deed to information about Trust activity.

Finding 4 — the Bartlett sale (the one we already knew about, now with the number)

This one the trustees have at least acknowledged happened — it's in the 14 October 2013 resolution. But Mommy's R1.36M Clause 7.1 share from that sale has never been paid, and there is no AFS line item showing it was ever accrued or distributed. That alone is a Clause 7.1 breach, and it's been breached for twelve years.

Finding 5 — the Flora Imports question (worth asking)

Here's one I keep coming back to and haven't been able to resolve yet: what about the Flora Imports sale in 2015 — was that also in the MRFT? I honestly don't know. I don't have a document in hand that says Flora Imports was Trust property, and I don't have one that says it wasn't. But the question is worth asking, because the parcel is right next door to the other Trust holdings and the current 2021 roll value is R55.6M — if it was Trust property, that's another R5.5M owed to Mommy that nobody has ever accounted for.

There are four possible explanations for the gap between "feels like it should have been Trust property" and "doesn't appear in the WinDeed trust-property record":

• Flora Imports was held through a nominee entity (a company registered to hold property on the Trust's behalf) — this is the most troubling possibility, because it is the mechanism by which trustees strip assets.
• Flora Imports was transferred out of the Trust before 2015 via a sale we don't yet have records of.
• Flora Imports was never Trust property to begin with — it belonged to Daddy personally or to another entity, and the Trust was never on title. In which case we drop it from the ledger.
• WinDeed's indexing missed it — possible but unlikely.

Three possible outcomes from that search: (1) chain of title shows the Trust → outside buyer directly, in which case this is another concealed sale alongside Portion 680 and Mommy is owed R5.56M more. (2) Chain shows Trust → nominee → outside buyer, which would mean asset-stripping and change the whole character of the case. (3) Chain shows the Trust never owned Flora Imports, in which case we drop it entirely and move on. All three outcomes are useful — we need the answer either way.

Finding 6 — the one about Erf 1326 that I don't fully understand yet

I found this one off Seeff's comparative-market-analysis data. The parcel is 2.49 hectares of what used to be our father's compound, and today it is the main Leroy Merlin store. If this was Trust property that got sold without being disclosed to us, it is a third concealed sale alongside Portion 680 and the Flora pair. If it was never Trust property to begin with, we drop it. Either answer is a WinDeed DO Property pull away.

I did not want to leave it off this report because the geography is too suggestive to ignore — but I want to be fair and flag it as unproven until we have the deed in hand.

What this adds up to

The trustees' position — in writing — is that she is owed R4.2M. The primary deed documents we already have in hand say she is owed, at minimum, almost twice that. The two open questions could push it meaningfully higher, but we don't need them to make the core case.

What I'm doing next

1. WinDeed voucher top-up (R17) this week, then pull the DO Property searches on Erf 1094 Rem (Flora Imports) and Erf 1326 (Leroy Merlin main). That resolves both open questions in one sitting.
2. Finish the evidence site. Waiting on Seeff Properties for the last of the deed-history detail. Once that lands I lock the map boundaries down to the exact cadastral lines (right now a few polygons are off by 20–40m) and the site is ready to walk anyone through — lawyer, mediator, or Mommy.
3. Formal lawyer consultation. I think we have enough for a letter of demand under Clause 7.1, independent of anything else. The Portion 680 sale alone is sufficient grounds. I'd rather we go in with the full picture, though.
4. Keep this vault locked down. It is only accessible to you (nikyrahner@gmail.com) and me. Nobody else can see this URL. If you want to loop in a lawyer later, we add their address to the allow-list.

One thing I want to say directly

Niky — I know this is heavy. It's a lot of money, which is one thing, but it's also our daddy's trust and our mommy's rights and that's a different kind of heavy. I don't want you to feel like you have to react to all of this immediately. Take a day. Read it. Click the PDFs. Push back on anything that doesn't ring true.

What I'm sure of: the R42M figure is wrong (deed says R54.7M), and the 2012 Portion 680 sale happened and was never told to us. Those two things, I would stake my name on in a courtroom. The Flora Imports question and the Erf 1326 question are both genuinely open — I don't know the answers yet. One more WinDeed pull resolves them.

What I'm asking of you right now: just read it. Nothing more. When you're ready, we talk.