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Total 679 Posts

Electronic Beneficiary Designations: an Interesting Change to the Pension Benefits Act

On November 15th, the Provincial Government released the Fall Economic Statement, and its accompanying implementation Bill. Bill 57, Restoring Trust, Transparency and Accountability Act, 2018,[1] contains 45 schedules, each relating to amendments to a different statute. Buried in Bill 57, in a single line of Schedule 33, is an interesting amendment to the Pension Benefits Act: New section 30.1.1 is added to the Act to allow for electronic designation of….

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Democracy – The Right to Vote for a Dead Guy

A dead Republican pimp has won a state assembly seat in Nevada – How’s that for an attention-grabbing opening? Election season in the U.S. has wrapped and it turns out that as much as we wanted to, Canadians were not allowed to vote. But this is an estates blog after all, so that leads to the main question my blog will attempt to answer: What happens when an election candidate….

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Estate Considerations for YouTube and Twitch “Partners”

Today’s blog was co-written with Demetre Vasilounis, Student at Law at Fasken LLP. It is now a given that, in the 21st century, estate planners should pay attention to how clients deal with their digital assets. This is true whether such digital assets consist of social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) or money invested into software platforms for the purposes of electronic transactions within these platforms (online games, application stores)…..

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Foundations with Donor Advised Funds

The current Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector seems to be quite interested in “donor advised funds” or DAFs. In particular, members of the Committee are suggesting that the Income Tax Act should be changed to require individual funds to have minimum disbursement quotas and separate regulatory reporting. This policy trial balloon is worth debating. If for no other reason than a lot of Canadians now have their philanthropic….

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Elder Law, Estate Planning, Philanthropy/Charitable Giving, Uncategorized

The “Rule of Convenience”: Why Legacies May be Subject to 5% Interest

Today’s blog is being brought to you by our guest blogger, Anna Chen. It is a long-standing common law rule that a personal representative has one year after a deceased’s death to wind up the estate. Referred to as the “executor’s year”, the rule is intended to give the personal representative some time to administer the estate before beneficiaries have a legal entitlement to demand payment. A related and similarly….

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My First and Only (Kind of) Experience with the Declarations of Death Act

  This blog was written by Sally Lee, LLB – Estate and Trust Consultant with Scotia Wealth Management. When I was in private practice, I worked on a probate file where the deceased was declared dead pursuant to subsection 2(5) of the Ontario Declarations of Death Act.  He was missing for at least seven years and his family members made the application to the court.  I did not work on….

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Estate Planning, Family Conflict, Uncategorized
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