21st Century Estate Practice: Shrunken heads and sperm

Hollywood’s vision of an estate solicitor sitting at their desk mulling fine points of tax law while sipping tea and drafting a will is so far from modern practice as to be laughable. One troubling issue for estate practitioners in the 21st century is the plethora of unique assets that have to be planned for, administered, and/or disposed of in a safe and permissible manner. An unscientific survey of our colleagues’ experiences yields some useful tips for dealing with unusual assets.

Estate Alert – Common Misconceptions about Joint Accounts and Joint Ownership

Elderly parents will often put their money into bank accounts held jointly with their adult children, or transfer real property into a joint tenancy with one or more of their adult children. Sometimes, this is done for expediency so that an adult child can help manage the asset. In other cases, this is a planning technique used to avoid estate administration tax when the parent dies.

Estate Alert – 2015 Federal Budget Highlights

Yesterday the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Joe Oliver, presented the federal budget for 2015-2016 (“Budget 2015”) in the House of Commons. The following is a summary of some of […]