All About Estates

Demetre Vasilounis

Total 27 Posts Website
Demetre is an associate in the Private Client Services group of Fasken’s Toronto office. He has a broad trusts and estates practice and has developed and implemented cohesive succession plans for clients involving a wide range of different family and corporate structures. He has also advised on a breadth of family wealth planning matters, including tax issues, estate freezes, cross-border and international estates, probate planning, disability planning, charitable gifting, asset protection strategies, personal privacy, intellectual property and domestic contracts. Demetre regularly speaks and writes about various legal issues in succession planning, including in particular the evolving area of digital assets in estate planning. His work has been cited by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and he has spoken at both national and international events. Demetre has obtained the prestigious Trust and Estate Practitioner (TEP) designation from the Society of Trusts and Estates Practitioners (STEP). While Demetre assists many families with navigating these areas, he is also experienced in helping individual entrepreneurs and business owners, philanthropists, athletes, artists, authors, entertainers, social media influencers and various types of professionals.

Videos and Wills: Helpful or Harmful?

Pictured: A screen grab from the music video for “Only Acting” by Kero Kero Bonito. It’s one of my favourite songs. It’s not quite about video wills, but it does show off some of the challenges of recording oneself. What are Video Wills? Some practitioners have floated the idea of…

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Will We Need to Start Remembering the “Right to be Forgotten”?

Pictured: Some myosotis flowers; colloquially known as “forget-me-nots”. I thought these would be appropriate for this blog post. In the estate planning world, we often see clients who want to be remembered for generations to come. For example, this could be through establishing a charitable gift, trust or foundation in…

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Further Assessing Drake’s Estate Planning Needs

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a blog post titled “Assessing Drake’s Estate Planning Needs”. The post looked at rap sensation Drake’s assets vis-à-vis his intent for his son Adonis to be the sole beneficiary of his estate, and the various considerations that he ought to have in planning for…

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Analog Art, Analog Assets

For my last blog post, I discussed the potential financial value of an individual’s “personalty” and clauses in wills governing such personalty. While an individual’s more traditional assets may include bank accounts, real estate or vehicles, there may also be some other personal items (e.g. collections) that may have significant…

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Gotta Catch ‘Em All: Pokémon Cards and Personalty Clauses

Just under six years ago, I bought a Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) Venusaur Ex Red and Blue Collection Box. I was feeling stressed about studying for my law school exams and, being a massive Pokémon fan, I went for a walk to my local hobby store and decided to…

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Digital Assets: How Advisors are Changing the World

While I enjoy writing about the legal aspects of digital assets in estate planning and administration, I don’t think that I have spent enough time focusing on the work of the wonderful advisors in this space: technology consultants, lawyers and policy analysts among them. The efforts of these advisors have…

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Digital Assets: Spotlighting Client User Considerations (Part II)

Today’s blog post was written in collaboration with Adele Ambrose – Student-at-Law at Fasken. This is the second part in a two-part blog series that explores the specific client considerations for digital assets in estate planning. In Part I, we took a look at the digital assets landscape in Canada…

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Digital Assets: Spotlighting Client User Considerations (Part I)

Today’s blog post was written in collaboration with Adele Ambrose – Student-at-Law at Fasken. It has become clear that the “wait and see” approach to digital assets and digital currency has now shifted to a need for prudent guidance and action by advisors and institutions. According to CoinMarketCap, the total…

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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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Shingeki no Kyojin: An Anime Unexpectedly About Family, Legacy and Succession

Last week, my colleague Yvonne Mazurak wrote a blog post about a recently-released television show, And Just Like That, discussing the estate planning issues highlighted by the events of the show. So, I thought I would provide a bit of a television recommendation show of my own…although my taste is…

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