The Advent of AI Technology Last week, I read a tongue-in-cheek post on LinkedIn about what the dockets of a lawyer practising in the 1950’s may have looked like. Humorous entries included everything from fixing jammed typewriters to doing legal research with ancient tomes. This lawyer’s social critique was insightful:…
Choosing who to name as the executor of your estate is an important decision to make when preparing your will (and a topic on which other All About Estates blogs have been written). But what happens if something happens to your executor, and they are unable or unwilling to act?…
The recently enacted Underused Housing Tax Act[i] (UHTA) applies a one per cent tax on the ownership of vacant or underused housing in Canada. Per the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) published notification[ii] on Jan 17, 2023, “the vast majority of Canadian owners of residential property are excluded owners and, therefore,…
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…
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…
Estates clerks and lawyers “speak” their own language. We use acronyms or initialisms[1] such as CAET, EIR, RCP, ARI, AET, GRE, POA and COLA. We use abbreviations like Benys and T’ees, and we draw triangles. The idea for this blog was born when reflecting on having to interpret a lawyer’s…
The beneficial ownership reporting for trusts (BORT) rules, originally announced in the 2018 Federal Budget on February 27, 2018, has made its way into the House of Commons. The original draft legislation released by Department of Finance on July 27, 2018 was updated on February 4th and on August 9th…
Today’s blog is co-written by Jennifer Campbell and Sandra Arsenault, Senior Law Clerks in the Private Client Services Group at Fasken. At the beginning of November, we were fortunate enough to attend the Institute of Law Clerks of Ontario (ILCO) annual conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake. This conference brings together law clerks…
In my previous blog, Principal residence – deceased vs. estate, I discussed the opportunity for an estate to claim a capital loss on a property that was previously the principal residence of the deceased and carry it back to the deceased’s final tax return under subsection 164(6) of the Income…
I recently spoke to an estate lawyer who told me she would never recommend certain charities to clients. Why? Because of the way these charities treated estate trustees. Some charities are unduly litigious, grind on fees, and are obstreperous about releases. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this comment…
