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 […]
Bonnie and Danny had a 12 year common law relationship. In a modern twist on the typical fact scenario, Bonnie was the older, successful business woman and Danny was the younger man who left his job at Bonnie’s car dealership to look after things at home. At trial, Justice Greer found that they were very
If you take steps to administer an estate pursuant to a will or to otherwise behave as if a will is valid, you may lose the right to later challenge that will. In Neuberger v. York, a decision of Justice Greer released in November 2014, she considered a motion to dismiss a will challenge that
Two things got me thinking about power of attorney litigation. I listened to a great program on CBC on Sunday, where the guests – an estate litigator in Toronto and an elder law specialist from the west – talked about the trend that many estate litigators have seen lately. That is, would-be heirs no longer
In a recent blog post entitled “Things Lawyers Know,” I laughed out loud when I read #13: “Lawyers are word, not number people. If their fee went up 10%, few lawyers would know how much extra they received.” Math often comes into play in an estates litigation practice, particularly in the context of a contested passing of
