The second BBL of the New Year was held on February 20, 2018. Despite the grey and dreary weather outside, BBLrs kept the conference room bright with a variety of interesting estate law discussion points. A summary of the BBL is found below.
The BBL’s opening topic was the growing presence of online registries for wills and powers of attorney. The County of Carleton Law Association’s recently launched wills registry, “Will Check”, was discussed, as was the independent power of attorney registry, “Estate Protect”, which is based out of Toronto.
From there, BBL’ers discussed some recent estates and trusts decisions. Cotnam v Rousseau, 2018 ONSC 216 was raised, and participants identified its similarities and differences with Carrigan v Quinn, 2012 ONCA 736. BBLers addressed the court’s treatment of s. 48 of the Pension Benefits Act in both cases, and identified how the court in Carrigan determined that pre-retirement death benefits are not sheltered from the “claw back” provisions of s. 72 of the Succession Law Reform Act.
Next, Teixeira v Markgraf Estate, 2017 ONCA 0819 was considered. Participants reviewed the Court of Appeal’s decision that if a person receives a cheque as a gift, but the donor dies before the cheque is cashed, the cheque will not meet the requirement of delivery to constitute a valid gift. BBLers noted that the main lesson learned was when one receives a gift by cheque, they should cash that cheque as soon as possible.
Lastly, BBLers discussed their favoured best practices for storing revoked testamentary documents. Some lawyers simply save the revoked will in their file, marked as “revoked”; others keep the revoked wills in a completely separate file altogether; and others require the client to destroy the will in their presence, and then keep the destroyed document in the client file for future reference.
The next BBL will happen on March 20, 2018 – we look forward to hearing from everyone then!
Noah Weisberg, Associate, Hull & Hull LLP
Charlotte McGee, Articling Student, Hull & Hull LLP