Wills, Trusts & Estates
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January 27, 2025
Outgoing official languages watchdog cheers court wins, urges vigilance to protect language rights
In his swansong before ending his seven-year term this week, federal Commissioner of Official Languages Raymond Théberge celebrated his office’s litigation victories in support of language rights, while cautioning Canadians against complacency.
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January 27, 2025
Canada sanctions Belarusian regime supporters for ‘gross and systematic human rights violations’
Ottawa has announced new sanctions — immigration bans, estate freezes and related penalties — on 10 people and 12 entities who support the ongoing violations of human rights in Belarus by the authoritarian regime of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
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January 23, 2025
SCC judge’s 13-year track record shows concern for fairness, privacy rights & access to justice
Supreme Court of Canada Justice Andromache Karakatsanis rarely attracts headlines, but her low public profile belies her impact on the legal landscape over the past 13 years in judgments that enforced the Charter rights of Canadians and pushed to expand access to justice, court watchers say.
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January 24, 2025
Exclusive: SCC’s Karakatsanis J. says job is ‘so extraordinary, it’s hard to think about doing anything else’
Supreme Court of Canada Justice Andromache Karakatsanis has seen many changes at the court since she was appointed in 2011 but its recent historic transformation into a fully bilingual female-majority court is “fantastic,” she says.
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January 24, 2025
Draft legislation provides details on extension of charitable tax deduction deadline
The federal Finance Department has released draft legislation and explanatory notes to amend the Income Tax Act to extend the deadline for making tax-deductible charitable donations for the 2024 tax year to Feb. 28, 2025.
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January 22, 2025
Federal Court of Appeal: RRSP transfer to widow exempt from tax debt clawback
The transfer of an RRSP from a deceased husband to his widow is not subject to a provision of the Income Tax Act allowing the Crown to collect unpaid tax debts from spouses or common-law partners, the Federal Court of Appeal has held.
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January 22, 2025
Traditional values v. contemporary justice: Court varies gender-biased will that favoured son
In 2021, Ginny Lam discovered that her mother’s will significantly favoured her older brother, William Law. Yat Hei Law bequeathed $2.9 million to William and left Lam only $170,000. Lam felt that Yat Hei’s preferential treatment of William in her will was profoundly unjust. Lam successfully applied to the B.C. Supreme Court to have her mother’s will varied.
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January 20, 2025
Saskatchewan regulator lists upcoming events on estates, AI, family law
The Law Society of Saskatchewan has published a roundup of upcoming events — one being mediation training sessions for lawyers and another being the Canadian Bar Association Saskatchewan’s mid-winter conference.
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January 16, 2025
Blakes partner roster expands
Blakes has named Allan Morgan, Rodney Perkins, Brittany Shamess, Christina Sutcliffe, Daniel Szirmak and Annika Wang as new partners.
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January 16, 2025
Ontario’s top wills & estates cases of 2024
As we usher in 2025 and bid adieu to 2024, it’s an excellent time to reflect on how the law evolved over the last year. For wills and estates practitioners, 2024 was an especially eventful year.