Johannesburg — South Africa's child-headed households often struggle because parents who succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses had not drawn up a will, a legal expert said on Wednesday.

"Many of the 35,000 child-headed households currently have property and assets tied up in the Master of the High Court's Office," Pat Moodley, director of legal services in the department of justice, told the local Mercury newspaper.

He noted that funds held in trust by the Master's Office as a result of poor planning by parents before they died had escalated by 75 percent over the past four years.

Moodley was addressing a workshop organised by the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Campus Law Clinic to educate HIV-positive parents on how to provide financial security for their children in the event of death.

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]