The administrations of some estates simply do not move forward smoothly. The Elias Gefen estate is one such estate. In Gefen v. Gaertner, 2019 ONSC 6015, Justice Kimmel addressed multiple issues which had stopped the administration from moving forward, ranging from mutual wills to secret trust agreements. Justice Kimmel also applied, for the first time…
The Supreme Court of Canada has given its blessing to Henson Trusts (fully discretionary trusts set up to not impact the beneficiary’s social assistance benefits) in S.A. v. Metro Vancouver Housing Corp., 2019 SCC 4. I previously blogged about this case when it was before the Court of Appeal. The Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation (the…
The United Kingdom’s top 25 charities by investments include charities for the promotion of health, education and religion. Number 23 on the list stands out for its rather unusual purpose. The National Fund is dedicated to paying off the UK’s national debt. But there’s a catch: the assets of the National Fund can only be…
A common estate planning technique to avoid probate tax is for a parent to transfer his or her house into joint tenancy with one of his or her children. That way, when the parent dies, the property passes by way of survivorship from the parent to the child without the need to go through probate…
A recent Court of Appeal decision from Alberta dealt with the interpretation of a holograph will. The Court of Appeal upheld a lower court’s decision that the testator intended to create a trust but the trust failed since the objects of the trust were uncertain resulting in an intestacy. The case serves as a good reminder that…
In estate disputes, it is common for parties to try to claw back into the estate bank accounts that were held jointly with the testator before death. The law provides a mechanism to do this – a resulting trust. Briefly, a resulting trust works as follows: any time property is transferred to someone else for…