All About Estates

Tag: family conflict

Total 25 Posts

Dearly Departed…or not?

A recent Toronto Star article[1] highlighted what has become a bit of an interesting viral trend in the modern internet era: “scorched earth” obituaries, written by one or more of a deceased person’s relatives, who do not have anything nice to say in their send-off of the departed. The article provides…

Continue Reading

Valuation of Interests in Discretionary trusts and Family Law

These days, it is quite common to find intergenerational wealth transfer to consist of property held in a discretionary family trust whose beneficiaries may or may not have been in marital relationships at the time of the time the trusts were created. A siginifcant number of legal and financials issues…

Continue Reading

Greeting a new day

As the days get shorter, so it seems does our tolerance levels. Families seem to be a lot more stressed.  As I have always said, families are complicated and whether it is the aftermath of two years of ‘social distancing’ or just a steady development of older age and more…

Continue Reading

YES YOU REALLY DO NEED A POWER OF ATTORNEY……

My colleague’s blog on August 5 was titled: “Do I Really Need A Power of Attorney?” Let me add my loud response of  ‘YES YOU DO’ because if you don’t, your wishes of how you want to live your life, will likely not be heard.  This is the reality for…

Continue Reading

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…

Continue Reading

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…

Continue Reading

Can Section 3 Counsel be Summoned for Examination?

Successfully summoning counsel of record for examination is typically a difficult task, and a motion to quash will often be brought after a summons is served on counsel for one of the parties. Case law in is clear that, generally, calling a lawyer to give evidence against their client should…

Continue Reading

A Presumptive Peril: The Law of Beneficiary Designations is Now in Flux

Calmusky v. Calmusky, 2020 ONSC 1506, is a 2020 decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that is ruffling some feathers among banks, financial advisors and estate planning lawyers in Ontario. In this case, the court applied the principles surrounding the presumption of resulting trust, established by the Supreme Court…

Continue Reading

Unclaimed Bodies and Setting Things Right

Unhappily, it is not uncommon for family members to be at loggerheads as to who controls the body of a loved one and whether the body should be cremated or buried. I previously blogged on the 2018 case Miller v. Miller, a decision by Justice Myers of the ONSC, which…

Continue Reading

ON A PAPER NAPKIN, DID YOU SAY?

The Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan was recently asked (in the case of Gust vs. Langan et al., 2020 SKQB 42) whether a will handwritten on a paper napkin created by the deceased sometime before his death met the requirements of being a valid will under the relevant Act to permit…

Continue Reading