All About Estates

Tag: assets

Total 7 Posts

New Year, New Will – and Other Important Moments to Revisit Planning

Happy 2024  everyone! The start of a new year is often the impetus for individuals to revisit their estate plan.[1]  While this is a worthwhile exercise, it’s important to remember that there are several other key moments that may occur at any point during a given year that should give…

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How Much Should You Leave To Your Children And When?

This week, I had a great opportunity to sit down with Andy Jeffery, Vice President, Family Office Advisory, at Northwood Family Office,[1] to discuss a question frequently raised by clients; “How much should I leave my children and when?” Below we distill our discussion into five questions, providing you with…

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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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Estate Planning for Tattoo Artists

It’s critical for anyone planning an estate, whether their own or someone else’s, to do a comprehensive analysis of anything that could be considered property of that estate upon the testator’s death. After all, section 2 of Ontario’s Succession Law Reform Act states that a “person may by will devise,…

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Presumption of Capacity and Duty of a Solicitor

A person who is over the age of 18 is presumed to be capable of entering into a contract, and the rest of the world is entitled to rely upon this presumption unless they have reasonable grounds to believe otherwise. However, the court in England was recently asked the question of whether a solicitor dealing with an elderly person had “no reasonable grounds to suspect incapacity”; to prove the negative and to set a standard with respect to the issue of contemporaneous notes.

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