An equal share of your estate could cost a child on disability benefits their monthly income and health coverage. Splitting everything evenly between your children feels like the fairest thing a parent can do, and the intention is right. Before you sign a will that divides everything equally, find out how to protect the support your child relies on.
It was a small moment at the end of a family dinner, the kind everyone laughs off. But for Gail, it brought back the question she’d been putting off for years. Who would handle her mom’s money if something happened? Who would talk to her doctors? And did anyone know where the papers were?
Evelyn didn’t hesitate. Her daughter Colette was organized, fair, and trusted by both her brothers, so naming her executor was easy. What nobody stopped to consider was where Colette lives, or the consequences that choice would bring for the whole family.
Not every estate gets the CPP death benefit, but the ones that do can now receive up to $5,000. It isn’t automatic and it isn’t guaranteed. Someone who spent much of their working life outside Canada, or who only worked here a few years, can leave an estate that qualifies for nothing.
There’s $1.6 billion sitting in a federal registry most Canadian executors have never heard of, and some of it belongs to estates that were closed years ago. Here’s where a dormant bank account ends up after ten years, how to search for it at no cost, and what happens if you find one too late.
Maureen had done everything right, and she had the paperwork to prove it. The grant of probate. A stack of death certificates. A lawyer who’d walked her through the whole process. And on the kitchen table in front of her, a small black device her father once called “where the Bitcoin lives.”
A friend at church told Evelyn to put her daughter’s name on the house title. No court, no probate, no fuss. Eight years later, that decision has a name she’s never heard, and possibly a filing deadline attached to it.
The Reason You Haven’t Signed Your Will Just Expired Somewhere in your house there’s a phone number for a lawyer. Maybe it’s a business card in a kitchen drawer, or a contact in your phone under a name you’d have Read more
Probate Costs $525 Here and $33,000 There Terrence and Yolanda kept a folder in the hall closet. Two wills, two powers of attorney, two personal directives, the life insurance policies, and a list of account numbers in Yolanda’s handwriting. They’d Read more
How Much Estate Planning Risk Can Your Family Absorb? There’s a moment in every new client meeting where the conversation turns to risk. How would you feel if this dropped fifteen percent in a quarter? Twenty-five? What would keep you Read more
