August 2014

The Stratford Festival has included ‘King Lear’ among this year’s performances.  ‘Lear’, of course, is the poster boy for older adults who use poor judgment in determining how and when to distribute their assets to their children.  The opening of King Lear reveals the King’s intent to divest his kingdom to his three daughters. Similar to many older adults, he “wishes unburdened to crawl toward death”.  However, he adds a….

Many estate plans include a transfer of property (e.g. shares of a privately held corporation) to a company and freeze the value (or price) of the transferred property to the current owners at the transfer date. To avoid some punitive provisions in the Income Tax Act associated with non-arm’s length transfers, transfer agreements often include a price adjustment clause (“PAC”) which provides for a retroactive adjustment to the transfer value….

The Ontario Superior Court recently addressed the question of the limitation period applicable to a will challenge.[1] The challenge in this case was brought by the testatrix’s son. The testatrix, Eleanor, died on June 4, 2011. She left Primary and Secondary Wills executed on April 9, 2011 that left specific assets to her son, Blake, and divided the residue of her estate equally between Blake and her other son, Cody…..

I have always stated that the Power of Attorney for Finances needs to be able to support the decisions made by the Power of Attorney for Personal Care. In order words, care needs should dictate where monies should be spent. The first part of the equation is understanding what the person requires today and what they likely will require tomorrow. How much care do they require and for what activities….

An emerging trend in estate administration in the past few years seems to be an increase in the number of insolvent estates. An estate is insolvent if it has liabilities in excess of its assets and therefore is unable to meet financial obligations with creditors as the debts become due. There are two primary methods for administration of insolvent estates: common law and statutory schemes under the Trustee Act or….

In my last blog I referred to Thomas Piketty’s new book, ‘Capital in the Twenty First Century’. Thomas Piketty is an acclaimed economist and his book is a compilation of extensive studies about capital and capital flows. Capital has a variety of different meanings. In this book ‘capital’ is defined as the value of all […]