There was a decision released recently in the case of Walling v. Walling in Ontario that offers a sharp wake-up call for estate trustees. In this case, the estate was divided between two young beneficiaries, and so the funds were held in trust for a number of years....

There are many cases released every month on estate disputes. One that has been of particular interest lately is the case of the estate of John Kaptyn. John died in 2007, having made a detailed and complex plan for his estate that would effectively skip a generation....

I listen regularly to the show “Q” on CBC Radio One. Last week, they featured a very interesting interview with the funeral director at Schoedinger Funeral Home in Columbus, Ohio, which is pioneering the concept of webcasting funerals. The concept was originally...

The Globe and Mail posted an article today on a company in Colorado called the Crestone End of Life Project that has a focus on green burials and alternative funeral arrangements. They offer the option of a funeral pyre, an at-home funeral, or burial services that use...

There seems to be an idea in North American culture that we like surprises. Surprise parties, unexpected gifts, fortuitous meetings – they’re all a hit. Where surprises cause big problems, however, is when they involve your estate. Ian Hull at Hull and Hull in Toronto...

The Globe and Mail published an article last week on business wills. The author interviewed Lynne Butler, who blogs at Estate Law Canada, about the need for separate instructions regarding what will happen to your business on your death. As Lynne notes, the time to...

You’re about to jump out of a plane with nothing but a parachute on your back, and suddenly realize you don’t have a will. What do you do? Ontario’s Succession Law Reform Act provides that a will can be done entirely in the testator’s own handwriting, signed at the...

The Globe and Mail published an article yesterday about Canadians' knowledge of dementia. It examined a survey recently published by the Alzheimer Society of Canada about Canadians' knowledge of symptoms of dementia. The survey revealed that almost one-quarter of...

There is a (somewhat obscure) doctrine in estates law called the cy-pres doctrine. What this does is allow a gift made to a charity that never existed, or no longer exists, to be made to either a successor charity or a similar charity, provided that the gift in the...

Most people these days have some sort of online presence, and more and more of us are acquiring digital assets to go along with that. I have blogged before on dealing with Facebook, Twitter and other accounts after death; today I want to talk about actual digital...