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You were asked to be someone’s Executor, and you said yes before they’d finished the question. Now what? In this week's article and episode, I talk about why that yes deserves more thought than most of us give it. A new national survey suggests a lot of Canadians already feel it’s a lot to put on family, yet most of us still agree without knowing what we’re signing up for. I’ve acted as an Exe...

You’ve lived together for years. You share a home, the bills, maybe the grandkids. Everyone thinks of you as married. So if one of you died tomorrow without a will, the other one would be looked after. Right? A lot of couples believe that. The answer isn’t the same across Canada, and for some couples it’s a hard one to hear. This week, I talk about what being common-law really means when one partn...

What happens to your estate if you and your spouse both die in the same accident? Most couples have never been asked, and most wills don't say. This week's episode and article look at what can happen when both spouses die close together, and why a few days between two deaths can change who inherits, how long the family waits, and how much work falls to the person settling things. I also ad...

Can you apply for probate without a lawyer? Depending on where the deceased person lived, and where you live, you might be able to. But filing the application is only one piece of an executor’s job. In this week's article and episode, I talk about how far different parts of Canada have gone with online and email probate filing, including Alberta’s online service for people applying on their ow...

When parents divide their estate equally between their children, it usually feels like the fairest decision they’ll make. But if one of those children receives provincial disability benefits, an equal share left to them directly can put their monthly benefit and their health coverage at risk. In this week's episode, I talk about why that happens and how parents and grandparents can leave a chi...

Who would handle your parents' finances if they couldn't? Who would make their healthcare decisions? Most families know they should ask. Many don't, until a crisis makes the decision for them. Holidays, family dinners and quiet visits are some of the best chances we get to talk about a power of attorney and a personal or healthcare directive. Most of us still don't bring it up. Nob...

You named your daughter as executor. She's organized, she's fair, and her brothers trust her completely. She's also lived in Phoenix for eleven years, and nobody thought to ask whatthat would mean.  In this week's episode I look at what happens when the person named to settle an estate lives somewhere other thanwhere the estate will be settled: What a Canadian court asks of them be...

Three months into settling her mother's estate, Alison sat looking at a line on her own checklist that said "CPP death benefit," and couldn't tell whether she'd done it or not. She had every reason to think it was handled. The funeral home had taken care of so much in those first days that she'd stopped tracking which agencies still needed something from her. In this epis...

Curtis closed his father's estate the way a careful person does. He worked from the folder his father left behind, closed every account listed in it, filed the terminal return, got the clearance certificate, and told his sister the cheques were coming. Eleven months later he learned about an account that had never been in the folder, and hadn't been at his father's bank for years. In t...

She had the grant of probate. She had the death certificates. She had a lawyer, a binder with tabs, and every piece of paperthe process asks for. She also had a small black device her father kept in a dresser drawer, and none of it opened that. This episode is about the difference between two kinds of digital asset that almost nobody hears about until they're the one dealing with it. Some of w...

A friend at church told Evelyn to put her daughter's name on the house title. When she was gone, the house would pass straight to her daughter. No court, no probate, no fuss. It took an afternoon and cost a few hundred dollars, and nobody asked whether her daughter was receiving half a house that day or simply having her name added to a piece of paper. That kind of arrangement has a legal name...

Signing a will has always meant everybody in the same room at the same time. You, your spouse, two witnesses, and a good chunk of a weekday at a lawyer's office. For a lot of Canadians,that scheduling problem is the actual reason the will never got done. In four provinces, that requirement is now gone for good. Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia allow wills to be signed and wi...

Terrence and Yolanda moved from Calgary to a bungalow outside Halifax with their wills in a folder in the moving truck. Same estate, same wills, same executor. In Alberta the probate fee would have been $525. In Nova Scotia it's closer to $16,000. Nothing about the family had changed. The documents were current. What changed was the address. Probate isn't federal. Thirteen provinces and te...

Before anyone builds you an investment portfolio, they find out what you're willing to put up with, what you could actually survive, and whether both of those match what you say you want. Nobody skips it. Then the conversation gets to your estate and it comes down to two questions about a will and a power of attorney. This episode takes that framework and points it at estates instead. The prob...

Most people who agree to be an executor picture a few months of paperwork. What they actually get is closer to a part-time job that can run a year or two, with long stretches where the only thing to do is wait. In this episode, I walk through what a realistic executor timeline looks like in Canada: getting through probate, filing the final tax return, and the CRA clearance certificate that has to...

Everyone knows the list of estate planning steps by now. Will, power of attorney, personal directive, beneficiary review, telling your family where things are. CTV covered it recently, and it struck a nerve, because most of us recognize ourselves somewhere in that list. Today I'm going through the practical side: what each step actually takes and where people get stuck trying to start. I cover...

Most families think keeping the vacation property in the family is just a matter of writing it into the will. It isn't. When the parents pass, the CRA treats the cottage or cabin as sold at fair market value the moment before death, and the resulting capital gains tax bill can run well into six figures, due before anyone inherits anything. In this episode, I walk through what that deemed dispo...

Your digital life doesn't disappear when you die. It gets stuck. Your executor can't just log into your accounts, even with a valid will. In this episode, we look at what actually happens to cryptocurrency, email, cloud storage, and social media when someone dies in Canada, and why the gap between what people assume and what actually happens catches so many families off guard. The full art...

She'd been paying her mother's bills for eighteen months when the bank froze the account and asked for legal documentation she didn't have. This week's episode talks about the gap that catches so many families off guard: doing the real work of managing a parent's finances without any legal authority behind it. Account numbers, debit cards, being known by name at the bank... non...

A new IG Wealth Management study found that 84 percent of Canadians say estate planning is a priority. But only 41 percent have a plan. In this episode I talk about what's actually getting in the way, because it isn't a lack of awareness. People know they should do this. The real blockers are subtler: not knowing where to start, not having sorted out what they want before they try to forma...

Most people who agree to be an executor do it because someone they love asked them to. What nobody tells them is that the moment they say yes, they're held to a specific legal standard, with real consequences if they fall short. In this episode, I'm talking about the executor standard: what it actually is, what it covers, and what a real 2026 BC Supreme Court case shows happens when it isn...

Having a will and having a ready estate are two different things, and most executors find that out in the first week after a death. In this episode I talk about what that week actually looks like from inside an executor's role, where solutions exist, and what genuinely prepared looks like in practice. If you have people who depend on you, or if you'll ever step into an executor role yourse...

A friend said three things to me recently that I’ve heard more times than I can count. “I’ll be dead, so it won’t be my problem.” “I know my kids, they won’t fight.” “If my spouse wants to deal with it after I'm gone, that’s up to her.” He has a will. He has five kids. He feels like he’s handled it. But his will passes everything to his spouse with no direction about personal property and no c...

What happens to an inheritance when the beneficiary is going through a divorce? It's a question that comes up more and more in estate administration, and the answers aren't always intuitive. In this episode, I'm walking through how inherited assets can lose their protected status, why the timing of executor distributions matters, and what parents can do when designing an estate plan th...

Blended family estate planning is one of the most misunderstood areas I see in estate work, and the cost of getting it wrong doesn't show up until after someone has died. In this episode, I'm talking through why the "leave everything to my spouse" approach so often backfires, how executors end up in the middle of conflict they didn't create, and what families in second marria...