Articles 2023

On June 26, 2023, Howard Black was presented with the OBA Award of Excellence in Trusts and Estates for 2023. For anyone who may have missed this wonderful event, or for those who want to experience it again, Howard has kindly agreed to share a copy of his speech. Many congratulations to the very deserving Howard Black.

Your Public Affairs Liaisons, Krystyne Rusek and Angelique Moss, have been hard at work bringing issues of legislative change and public affairs affecting the estates bar to the attention of our Executive and to our members. Further to the previous update provided in March, Krystyne and Angelique provide an additional update summarizing recent matters.

This article outlines an opportunity for OBA members to contribute to strengthening the capacity of the workplace to fully include workers with disabilities.

This article explores Decision No. 831/22 which addressed the issue of trying to read the WSIB's operational policies together with the AMA Guides to rate a worker's permanent impairment when a worker has overlapping physical brain injuries and psychological injuries.

Although we are only halfway through 2023, there have been plenty of interesting trusts and estates decisions that have been released so far this year. In this article, Garrett Horrocks reviews several of the top cases from the first half of 2023.

As part of a series of Q&As, in this article Sanaya Mistry interviews Lucy Main and Lori Isaj of WeirFoulds LLP about their experiences in their estate planning practices.

Although the advent of virtual hearings has brought with it many advantages, it has also led to some confusion given differences in the presumptive mode of appearance in different courts. The OBA has created a helpful chart to assist in determining the mode of hearing.

The final Brown Bag Lunch of the OBA’s 2022-2023 term was held on June 20. As always, attendees came ready to share their wisdom and practice tips with others, including on the topics of estate planning for the family cottage, filing procedures for applications to prove a lost Will, and options to avoid probate.

In Doucet v. Royal Winnipeg Ballet, 2022 ONSC 976, reversed 2023 ONSC 2323, Justice Perell concluded that representative plaintiffs should never be granted honoraria. This article comes to the same conclusion, arguing that there is no basis on law for granting honoraria.