All About Estates

Tag: family law

Total 6 Posts

Lack of Financial Disclosure Comes at a Significant Financial Cost

Today’s Blog Post was written by Gabrielle Arbic-Lloyd, Student-at-Law at Fasken LLP In February, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered one spouse to pay the other more than one million dollars in costs in addition to spousal and child support. So what motivated the Court to order this spouse to…

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Children are not Chattels: Who Cares for a Child when a Primary Caregiver Dies?

In Marshall vs. Snow, the court was asked to determine who should be awarded primary custody of a minor child following the death of her mother (the child’s primary caregiver). Prior to the mother’s death, the child’s father and mother shared joint custody but not equal parenting time or decision-making rights…

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Are Domestic Contracts Becoming More Popular?

When I explain to people whom I’m meeting for the first time that I’m a lawyer and that among my areas of practice I draft domestic contracts, I’m often met with a response to the effect of “You mean, like, a pre-nup?” I can confirm that a “pre-nup” is, in…

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Estate Planning and Family Law: The Matrimonial Home Part II

In a prior blog, I began a discussion of the use of marriage contracts as part of an integrated estate plan to preserve and protect family wealth. In particular, that blog began a discussion of the legal regime that governs a “matrimonial home” under the Ontario Family Law Act (“FLA”),…

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The Intersection between Family Law and Estates Law

The Family Law Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. F.3 provides that when a spouse dies and the surviving spouse’s net family property[1] is less than the net family property of the deceased spouse, the surviving spouse may elect to take one-half of the difference between the net family property of the…

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Interrelation of Family Law and Estate Planning

With many couples, one or both spouses have had previous marriages or common law relationships. For many reasons, these couples’ estate planning instructions are not usually the traditional “all to my spouse with a gift over to my issue”, and clients should understand how their estat planning decisions may be impacted by family law.

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