I thought I would do a brief post today on the differences between a couple of American and Canadian terms. Let’s start with the big one: attorney. In the U.S., an attorney is a lawyer. In Canada, an attorney is an agent. Here, we call ourselves simply lawyers. You...
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cesia@wall-arm.ca
The rabbit hole of digital ownership
My friend Sean Bawden read this article the other day and posed this question to me: what happens to your iTunes library when you die? I have written before about digital assets (here and here). Most of that information, however, is about social networking and other...
Start digging
A few months ago, I blogged about how far up and down you own on your property. Today, I thought I would focus in on one of those: mining rights. In Ontario, whether you own the subsurface rights to your property depends on a lot of things. First, when the Crown first...
DIY
I've mentioned it a lot before: wills are complicated, and hard to do on your own. I feel rather vindicated after reading this article in Consumer Reports, where they analyzed several online will-production tools and established that, unsurprisingly, unless your needs...
Renting underground
I have a lot of clients who want to buy properties that have the possibility of renting out the basement for some extra income. There are several concerns that you should be aware of if you intend to do this. Is the apartment legal? In Barrie, very few basement...
Choosing your baby’s lawyer
I blogged last week on choosing a guardian for your children before the government does it for you. Here are some other things to consider in terms of estate planning once you have a child: Get advice on life insurance. Maybe you have a good policy through your...
Abandonment
A client called me not long ago to let me know that the sellers of the home she had bought had left some items behind. Her question: did she have to arrange for the new owner to retrieve them? The general rule on items in the house is that chattels go unless they have...
Choose, or someone else will
We tend to go through cycles with our friends as we enter certain age ranges. Last year, I attended six weddings; this year, 11 of my friends (including two of those brides) will welcome new babies into their families. With the recent birth of one friend's son, I got...
Choose wisely
Today, I thought I would blog about something that's been taking over my life a bit lately: the busy summer season and choosing your closing date. It is traditional for real estate to be busy in the summer; people frequently go house hunting in the spring once the...
How we die
Perhaps many years of helping clients plan their estates has made me a little morbid, but I find these things fascinating: here is a chart on the most common causes of death in 2010 vs. 1900. Check out the full link from the New England Journal of Medicine via the...