The recent case of Sylvester v. Britton, 2018 ONSC 6620 (“Sylvester”) provides an excellent review of the law regarding incapacity, attorneys for property and personal care, capacity assessments, and other issues which often arise in estate/capacity litigation cases. While the decision addresses many interesting points, this blog will focus upon…
Health Quality Ontario, in collaboration with clinical experts, patients, residents, and caregivers across the province, is developing quality standards for care providers in Ontario. I participated in developing the quality standard: Behavioural Symptoms of Dementia: Care for Patients in Hospitals and Residents in Long-Term Care Homes. This quality standard focuses…
The current Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector seems to be quite interested in “donor advised funds” or DAFs. In particular, members of the Committee are suggesting that the Income Tax Act should be changed to require individual funds to have minimum disbursement quotas and separate regulatory reporting. This…
My June 2017 blog described that most seniors appoint a continuing power of attorney for property (CPOAP), partly to avoid having the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee (OPG&T) assume the role of statutory guardian of property under the Substitute Decisions Act (SDA) or the Mental Health Act (MHA)…
Undue influence results in benefits to a beneficiary/donee which would not have occurred except for the undue influence imposed by the beneficiary/donee upon the testator/donor. Undue influence can be conceptualized into two distinct types: (1) “actual” undue influence and (2) “presumed” undue influence. Actual undue influence is concerned with coercive…
Section 4(1) of the Health Care Consent Act (HCCA) sets out a two-part test for determining whether a person has the capacity to consent to medical treatment, to be admitted to a care facility, or to receive a personal assistive service/device: Is the person able to understand information relevant to…
This blog was written by Ronald Neal, student-at-law at de VRIES LITIGATION LLP. Even those with the “right stuff” are not immune to elder abuse. Such is the apparent case with Buzz Aldrin, a retired astronaut, lunar module pilot, and engineer who is now finding himself in the midst of…
Written by Jessica Rochman Fowler The tech industry is no stranger to age bias in employment practices. Several articles have been written over the past few years about ageist assumptions that permeate the tech world, including that older people can’t keep up with improving technology, or that older employees should…
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada held that the ban on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was unconstitutional (for a summary of the decision, click here). However, MAiD is not available to all persons; to qualify, a person requesting MAiD must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition including…
Case Example 1: John, was a 93 year old, well -to -do gentleman, never married and had no known family. He lived in his own home in a nice part of the city. His next door neighbor had kept an eye out and assisted him over the years by shoveling…
