The requirement of registration should be the same for all marriages. Processes for registration should be accessible throughout the country, including in rural areas, and the government should engage in necessary awareness-raising about the important benefits of registration to encourage it. Those with unregistered customary unions need an avenue to have their marriages recognized and to be given the opportunity for posthumous recognition, without the reliance on the testimony of in-laws. Without such an avenue for recognition and registration, the formal, civil law will continue to exclude widows in unregistered customary unions from its protection. The Deceased Persons Family Maintenance Act and the Deceased Estates Succession Act, which address questions of marital property upon the death of a spouse, both appear to provide for equal inheritance rights for women and men upon the death of a spouse.101 However, in practice, the results for widows and widowers are far from equal. The Deceased Persons Family Maintenance Act calls for estates to be administered according to the rules that would have applied if the marriage had ended in divorce, applying the Matrimonial Causes Act.102 This law prohibits courts from exercising power over any property that was acquired by inheritance or custom or property that is of “particular sentimental value.”103 In effect, any property that a husband had inherited (and nearly all property was inherited by men until relatively recently) continues to be out of reach for widows. The Deceased Estates Succession Act has a similar provision.104 It provides only for occupancy and usage rights, not outright ownership.105 The Deceased Persons Family Maintenance Act provides that any person who “does an act with the intention of depriving another person of any [inheritance] right, or interferes with any other person’s right … shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level six or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or to both such fine and 101 Deceased Persons Family Maintenance Act, no. 39 of 1978, cap. 6:03; Deceased Estates Succession Act, no. 16 of 1873, cap. 6:02. 102 Deceased Persons Family Maintenance Act, sec. 7(3)(c). 103 Matrimonial Causes Act, cap. 5:13, sec. 7(3)(a, b, c). 104 Deceased Estates Succession Act, sec. 4. 105 Matrimonial Causes Act, sec. 10(1). 41 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JANUARY 2017