Lawyers for Michiel Johannes de Beer and his wife, Hester Magdalena, advertised in newspapers in July that within 21 days they intended to distribute the belongings of Katrina Petrus, rejecting appeals from the maid's family to give them her Katutura house as a goodwill gesture in memory of their faithful worker who had served them for decades.

The move to claim the inheritance will leave the domestic worker's nieces homeless unless they buy the house at the price De Beer has set - a figure that is nearly twice the official valuation of the house.

Petrus's family now say they will challenge the will and their lawyer has asked the De Beers to provide them with information about the signing of the document.

Schalk Steyn, the lawyer for the De Beers, who placed the advertisements through his law firm Van Der Merwe-Greef Incorporated, has failed to return messages left at his office over the past two months.

A woman at the house of the retired De Beer couple at Henties Bay said they had gone to Pretoria.

Maria Nangombe, who lives in the one-bedroom house in Katutura with her sister and their children, said De Beer had ignored a request to give them the house.

Nangombe said De Beer has asked for up to N$50 000 for the house, or he will sell it on the open market.

The Municipality, which owned the house during the days of Apartheid, has priced it at nearly half what De Beer wants.

Nangombe is particularly bitter that she and her siblings paid the loan repayments and rates for the house when Petrus lived with the De Beers and was working for the couple.

"He is just saying he has inherited from her.

He did not give any reason.

He is no longer claiming that he helped her pay for the house," she said of De Beer.

Petrus's family said they had been paying part of the N$8 000 bond on the house from the early 1990s until her death in August 2000.

She lived with the De Beers at Henties Bay until a year before she died.

When Petrus became ill, said Nangombe, the white couple sent the old woman to her relatives in Windhoek.

The family said she began working for the De Beers in the 1960s or 1970s at Ongwediva.

The will was drawn up in 1987 and appears genuine, but Nangombe said they have hired Elize Angula at Lorentz & Bone to contest it.

Petrus's family have now applied for legal aid from Government to challenge the will.

Angula said yesterday she has already asked Steyn to provide the names of witnesses in order to ascertain the signing of the will.

The family questions whether the semi-literate Petrus knew what she was doing when she signed the will.

They also want to know why De Beer waited two years after her death to enforce it.

He has started demanding a rental payment of N$500 a month on the Katutura house.

It is not clear how old Petrus was.

She had two identity documents, one stating she was born in 1926 and another saying 1952.

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