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...
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Estate Planning
Signing a will in a language you can’t speak
Last week, I blogged about signing a will when you have visual impairment that prevents you from reading the will. This week, I thought I would write about something related: what happens when you need to sign a will (or other document, for that matter) but you can't...
Signing when you can’t see
I was asked a very interesting question by a client today: how do you sign a will if you are blind? There is a provision in the Succession Law Reform Act that requires the will to be in writing and signed. However, it can also be read to the client and signed at his...
The horror! The horror!
I came across this very interestingly titled article the other day. The entire article goes through a series of possibly devastating errors made in wills - both DIY jobs, and ones by lawyers who do not focus on estates law. From someone copying and pasting a name into...
Can you afford to die?
I came across this fascinating, if a bit morbid, infographic today. Essentially, it strips funeral, cremation and other burial services down to their basic costs. I think what I found most interesting was the extreme rise in funeral costs from an average of $709 in...
Providing for children conceived after death
Karen and Robert Capato married in 1999. Robert was diagnosed with cancer soon after their marriage; they knew they wanted children, so they began trying and also froze some of Robert's sperm. They had a son, but knew that they wanted more children. After Robert's...
Advice for advisors
I missed blogging last week for what I think was a very good reason: I am on the planing committee for a golf tournament for the Barrie Women and Children's Shelter. This was the third annual tournament, but we still needed to be planning since September of last year,...
Donate your organs via Facebook
With all the hubbub about Facebook's IPO last week, I thought I would write about something Facebook-related, namely donating your organs. Seriously. Facebook users in the US and UK can now use a new feature to sign up, via Facebook, with their local organ-donor...
Regulating estates lawyers
I happened across this article in IFA Online the other day about regulation of estates lawyers in the UK. Essentially, their governing body has proposed making will drafting a "reserved" area of practice, so that only those lawyers with special expertise (and...
Fun facts
Larry Bodine posted this article a few days ago over at the JDSupra blog called "Ten Things You Don’t Know About Estate Planning." Among the more unusual: the first will dates back to ancient Egypt, and involved Uah leaving all to his wife, Teta; the record for the...