Estate planning for pets has made for some very wealthy animals. Remember the US hotel heiress Leona Hemsley? Known as the Queen of Mean, she left $12 million out of her estimated $5 billion estate to her Maltese lap dog, Trouble. The dog’s inheritance was reduced to $2 million, but…
I am an avid reader and always learn something new, even when reading for pleasure. The novel I recently finished, Cold, Cold Bones, by Kathy Reichs was no exception. This is the paragraph that piqued my interest: “A woman in Mount Holly was struck by a falling object while wrapping…
This Blog was written by: Alicia Mossington (Godin), Estate and Trust Consultant, Scotia Wealth Management An estate trustee, also known as an executor, is responsible for administering the estate of the deceased and carrying out the terms of the Will (or other testamentary documentation). The recent article by Rebecca Studin titled…
In a recent British Columbia case, the court was asked to interpret the residue clause of a will. The testator’s wife held a life interest in the Estate’s property and was a beneficiary of an ongoing testamentary trust. However, both her stepchildren (and presumed receipients of the residue of the…
Retirement accommodation can be costly. I have written about the cost of remaining at home with 24 hour care ( $35/hr on average in Canada), I have written about NORCs and sharing the caring and I have written about retirement residences and long term care homes. CTV News had an…
Today’s Blog was written by Rahul Sharma, Partner, Fasken LLP, Toronto My last blog post was very early in the year. In that post, I outlined — and generally responded to — certain common questions posed by newcomers to Canada. As the year progresses, Canada continues to draw in large…
In estates, the tax rules governing professional artists and their art are both enabling and complex. On the enabling side of the ledger, art is treated as inventory for tax purposes, which means works can have a NIL value. Sales, however, are fully taxable as income, not capital gains. On…
In the Estate of Nordby, 2023 ONSC 821, an executor was committed to prison for contempt of court for breaching a court order to pass accounts. Facts: Jennifer Lynn Nordby died on January 23, 2013. Her Will appointed her father, Harold Nordby, as estate trustee and named her two children,…
For many years, non-arm’s length intergenerational transfers of corporate businesses were treated inequitably under the Income Tax Act (ITA). A transfer of a corporate business between non-arm’s length parties[1] resulted in dividend treatment to the vendor instead of capital gains treatment, precluding the ability to claim the capital gains deduction. …
This blog post on the Elder Care Planning Framework for Decision Making, Part 2, is based on a panel presentation at Elder Law Day in Toronto in March 2023. Participants expressed an interest in using the elder care planning framework to provide context for decision-making and planning. Part 1 proposed…