Wills, Trusts & Estates

  • October 21, 2026

    Dementia Justice Canada calls for mandatory legal assessment for any advance MAID requests

    Dementia Justice Canada is urging Parliament to require an independent legal assessment before medical assistance in dying is administered under an advance request, warning that people who have lost decision-making capacity need protection from coercion, undue influence and abuse.

  • October 21, 2026

    When the mortgage comes due: Managing estate-owned property amidst estate disputes

    Estate litigation can take months or years to resolve, but mortgage obligations do not wait. For estate trustees and beneficiaries, the core challenge is preserving the value of estate property while competing claims are litigated.

  • October 21, 2026

    Estate freeze doesn’t turn a pre-marriage gift into excluded property

    For decades, the estate freeze has been a staple of succession planning for Canadian business families. The mechanics are familiar to any tax or estate practitioner: the owner exchanges growth shares for fixed-value preferred shares, and a newly settled family trust subscribes for fresh common shares that will capture all future growth. The tax benefits are well understood.

  • October 20, 2026

    Paul Reid joins Fasken as partner in Tsuut’ina

    Paul Reid has joined Fasken as a partner in its litigation and dispute resolution group, based in the firm’s Tsuut’ina, Alta., office.

  • October 20, 2026

    Should an Ontario small claims sheriff’s sale cost tens of thousands?

    Outside of defence procurement, the Ontario Superior Court is perhaps the most dysfunctional government entity in Canada. Given that responsibility for the court is divided between the federal and provincial governments, that judges have decreed themselves above transparency or accountability, and that the system lacks meaningful feedback mechanisms, that result is largely to be expected. Still, watching this dysfunction play out in a small claims sheriff’s sale demonstrates a system plumbing new lows.

  • October 20, 2026

    Cultural taboos, aging parents and keeping estate plans updated

    With increasing longevity comes a host of challenging issues. One of them is maintaining an up-to-date estate plan.

  • October 14, 2026

    Reid, Gallo join Alexander Holburn to lead family law group

    Alexander Holburn Beaudin + Lang LLP (Alexander Holburn) has launched a family law group in Vancouver with the addition of partners Jane Reid and Rosemary Gallo.

  • October 13, 2026

    CIVIL PROCEDURE – Actions - Lis pendens (certificate of pending litigation) - Quashing or dismissal of

    Appeal by Harjit from orders dismissing his civil claim and cancelling a certificate of pending litigation against his late father Swinder’s residential property.

  • October 08, 2026

    McEwan Partners welcomes associate Megan Walwyn

    Megan Walwyn has joined McEwan Partners as an associate in Vancouver.

  • October 08, 2026

    AI and the future of estate planning: Will estate lawyers become obsolete?

    With the rapid progress of artificial intelligence in the legal field, we often hear the same question arise again and again: will AI replace the need for estate planning lawyers? It’s a fair question now that legal tech is able to draft a variety of documents, conduct legal research and review huge volumes of information in seconds.

  • October 08, 2026

    Foreign-funded advocacy after FITAA: Registration and tax exposure across organizational forms

    Part one of this series traced how charities and non-profit organizations are governed by two different, and now increasingly divergent, tests for advocacy activity under the Income Tax Act.

  • October 07, 2026

    Feds say bill coming to allow advance directives for MAID but will bar MAID access to mentally ill

    Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser says the Liberal majority government will introduce “in weeks” groundbreaking legislation to permit persons with serious medical conditions to consent in advance to medical assistance in dying (MAID), i.e. before they lose their capacity to consent to the procedure. The planned bill would also bar MAID access on an “indeterminate basis” to persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness, he said.

  • October 07, 2026

    Scarfone Hawkins adds 4 associates to Hamilton office

    Scarfone Hawkins LLP has welcomed James Price, Reilly McIlhone, Tania Robinson and Andrew Spelman as associate lawyers in its Hamilton office.

  • October 06, 2026

    Melting the estate freeze: Why Appeal Court’s decision in Lang-Newlands upends post-freeze trust planning

    Intergenerational estate freezes have long served as a bedrock mechanism for Canadian business owners seeking to defer tax and shelter wealth across generations. For years, corporate planners and family litigators assumed that routing future growth through a post-marriage discretionary family trust would cloak that interest as an excluded “gift after marriage” under Ontario’s Family Law Act (FLA).

  • October 06, 2026

    From the 10% rule to the purpose test: Two different advocacy regimes under the Income Tax Act

    This is the first of a two-part series on the compliance landscape facing organizations that engage in policy advocacy, whether structured as 1) registered charities, 2) non-profit organizations or 3) commercial entities.

  • October 02, 2026

    Supreme Court kicks off busy fall session with new judge from the west and impressive new digs

    The Supreme Court’s fall session is packed with interesting appeals in diverse areas of law including class actions, contracts, Crown immunity and Charter rights. The top court’s session begins Oct. 5 with an “opening of the court” ceremony in the West Memorial Building at 344 Wellington Street in Ottawa.

  • October 01, 2026

    Limited shareholder expectations under parental control do not carry over to sibling control: court

    The British Columbia Court of Appeal has upheld an oppression finding against a family company, ruling that a shareholder’s limited expectations while her father controlled the business did not restrict her entitlement to equitable treatment after her brother assumed control.

  • October 01, 2026

    Hafeez Khan appointed to Manitoba Court of King’s Bench

    Hafeez A. Khan has been appointed a judge of the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba, Family Division, in Winnipeg.

  • October 01, 2026

    Mental health, AI on radar of Manitoba law society president

    Mental health, job stress and keeping up with AI remain “front of mind” for the new president of Manitoba’s law society.

  • October 01, 2026

    Estate planning and Canadian citizenship by descent

    Many people may be surprised and pleased to learn that there is a new path to becoming a Canadian citizen. The Government of Canada passed Bill C-3, An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act (2025), on Dec. 15, 2025. Before this legislation came into effect, Canadian citizenship by descent was limited to the first generation born outside Canada. For example, Emily was born or naturalized in Canada, and she could pass her citizenship to her child, Duncan, born outside of Canada.

  • September 30, 2026

    Contractual obligations of the deceased

    For executors, managing a deceased’s commercial covenants requires fulfilling the dead’s obligations without exposing the trustee to personal liability. It is incumbent on lawyers to inform, advise and protect their clients regarding these obligations.

  • September 30, 2026

    Exclusive: SCC’s Côté J. talks advocacy, key cases & rule of law as her 12th anniversary approaches

    Supreme Court of Canada Justice Suzanne Côté says she finds intervener advocacy on Zoom to be as effective as oral submissions made in the courtroom, but she is also alive to contrary arguments made by legal organizations, such as the Canadian Bar Association and The Advocates’ Society.

  • September 28, 2026

    Intergenerational business transfer capital gains exception: What the vendor gives up matters

    Section 84.1 of the Income Tax Act, the intergenerational transfer rules, has since 2024 contained a working exception for sales of a private company to a child’s corporation. Paragraph 84.1(2)(e) deems the vendor and the purchaser corporation to deal at arm’s length where the conditions of either ss. 84.1(2.31) or (2.32) are met, which switches off the deemed dividend and leaves the vendor with a capital gain eligible for the lifetime capital gains exemption — $1,275,000 for 2026. The conditions are not tax conditions. They are a statutory description of a vendor who has left the business, and the vendor’s counsel, not the accountant, is the one who has to make the client match it.

  • September 25, 2026

    Exclusive: Supreme Court of Canada Justice Suzanne Côté mulls her post-bench future

    Supreme Court of Canada Justice Suzanne Côté is thinking about what life after the bench might look like, she tells Law360 Canada. The court’s impactful and most prolific judge, who turned 68 this week with no apparent loss of drive or energy, says she is healthy and still loves the work that has earned her a reputation as a trailblazer and original thinker.

  • September 25, 2026

    David Postel new partner at WEL Partners

    David Postel has joined WEL Partners as a partner, where he acts for clients on the estates, civil, and commercial lists throughout Ontario in trusts, estates and related matters. According to a statement from the firm, Postel’s practice also deals with family wealth disputes over control of closely held businesses.