14 February 2022 New Year, New Changes The new year ushered in several important changes for estate planning lawyers: 1. Court Forms New Ontario Court forms came into force on January 1, 2022, which have simplified the probate application process.
14 February 2022 TAGS: Guest Post Conversation Tips for Clients and their Executors With a new year comes new resolutions, goals, and organization plans. As a result, estate planning tends to get a boost of popularity at this time of year due to the by-product of
10 February 2022 TAGS: Case Law Case Brief - An unwitnessed will In McCarthy Estate (Re), 2021 ABCA 403, the Court of Appeal of Alberta considered whether a chambers judge erred by refusing to use its dispensing power to order that an improperly executed will is still valid.
29 November 2021 TAGS: Guest Post Guest Post -Digital Wills Are Coming To BC – How To Make Your Will Online An overwhelming majority (89%) of British Columbia residents think it’s already legal to sign your will online. Ironically, under the current Wills, Estates, & Succession Act, estate planning is vastly an offline
29 November 2021 Practice Management Considerations: Estate Trustee Records and Compensation It is imperative for lawyers acting as estate trustees or under a power of attorney to keep thorough and accurate records. There is a duty at common law and under the Trustee Act
25 November 2021 TAGS: Case Law Case brief - Applying the armchair rule In Moolla v. Rundle et al., 2021 ONSC 7488, the Superior Court considered an application for directions regarding how to interpret an ambiguous provision in a will.
29 October 2021 TAGS: Guest Post Guest Post - The Role of Online Will Writing Services – Where Exactly Do they Fit? There is an undeniable trend of Canadians turning to online Will writing services to prepare their Will and other estate planning documents. Across all online Will service providers a conservative estimate would indicate that over 100,000 Wills are created every year using these services in Canada.
29 October 2021 TAGS: Features Unlock extra features with a free NoticeConnect account Creating an account with NoticeConnect is hassle-free. The whole process takes under two minutes and gets you access to features that we reserve for law firms.
29 October 2021 TAGS: Case Law Case Brief - When is a handwritten name not a signature? In BMO Trust Company v. Cosgrove, 2021 ONSC 5681, the court considered the validity of a holographic codicil.
26 August 2021 TAGS: Company Updates Partnership with Epilogue We are excited to announce our recent partnership with Epilogue. This partnership makes it easy for Epilogue customers to register their wills on our Canada Will Registry.
25 August 2021 TAGS: Features New Feature: Updating your Email Address We've added a new feature that lets NoticeConnect users update the email address used for their account.
5 July 2021 TAGS: PracticeConsiderations Litigation Guardians and the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee In Ontario, the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee (“PGT”) is part of the Victims and Vulnerable Persons Division of the Ministry of the Attorney General. The Public Guardian and Trustee Act sets out the PGT’s role, responsibilities and duties.
26 May 2021 TAGS: Discussion Tips to Avoid Work From Home Burnout As we move through the third wave of the pandemic, it’s easy to feel fatigue building up. This is especially true for professionals who’ve been working from home and dealing with all the changes that brings.
20 May 2021 TAGS: Estate Law Marriage No Longer Revokes a Will in Ontario In February we broke down Bill 245, the Accelerating Access to Justice Act and last month the bill received Royal Assent. One of the act's biggest changes is the repeal of ss. 15(a) and 16 of Ontario's Succession Law Reform Act (the "SLRA"), meaning that marriage no longer revokes a will.
29 April 2021 TAGS: Features New Feature - Custom Location Posting a Notice to Creditors and not seeing the city or town you're looking for on our location drop-down field? We've launched a new feature for listing custom locations.
28 April 2021 TAGS: PracticeConsiderations Is your client dealing with an insolvent estate? There may be circumstances where your client is “inheriting” an insolvent estate. Insolvency, which is different from bankruptcy, is where a person, living or dead - is unable to meet his or her liabilities or has an excess of liabilities over assets.
9 April 2021 TAGS: Company Updates You can now join the Canada Will Registry within Will Builder The Canada Will Registry integration with Will Builder allows legal professionals to manage their will vaults, and receive alerts if someone is looking for a will in their firm's possession.
31 March 2021 TAGS: Estates Carefully searching for a will for small estates As of last month the Application for a Small Estate Certificate asks, in cases of intestacy, for the Applicant to declare that they "have carefully searched for a will of the deceased and was unable to locate a will."
16 March 2021 TAGS: Tech Securing Unparalleled Safety with the Cloud The cloud. If you use a computer or cell phone, odds are you’ve heard of it. Often. Over the past ten years or so, this term has become increasingly common in everything from how we store our personal photos to how we do business.
24 February 2021 TAGS: PracticeConsiderations Accelerating Access to Justice Act We are a year into life with Covid-19 and while we’ve certainly adjusted to the changes introduced by the Ontario Government in an effort to modernize the justice system, there are more noteworthy changes that will likely come into effect this April.
22 February 2021 TAGS: Estate Law New regulations approve NoticeConnect in Saskatchewan Saskatchewan has updated its estate administration rules and now requires Notices to Claimants to be published on NoticeConnect.
17 February 2021 TAGS: Search Locate Missing Wills with the Canada Will Registry Submitting a search with the Canada Will Registry is simple and takes less than five minutes. All you have to do is tell us who you are, whose will you're searching for, and how to reach you. Follow these simple steps below to submit a search for any estate.
29 January 2021 TAGS: Will Registry Case Study - Finding a Missing Will with the Canada Will Registry Davies Spina Falquez LLP (“DSF”) is a law firm in Toronto that discovered a missing will as a direct result of searching the Canada Will Registry. Susan Davies, founder and partner at DSF, has been using NoticeConnect since 2017.
26 January 2021 TAGS: Discussion 4 Steps to Start the Year Right With 2020 finally behind us, it’s time to step forward into a new year that’s hopefully much less turbulent than the last one. But, there’s no need to do it alone. Below, we’ve outlined four steps legal professionals can take to kick off the year on a high note and carry it all the way through.
15 January 2021 TAGS: Company Updates Connecting Queen's Elder Law Clinic and the Canada Will Registry Last month we onboarded the Queen’s Elder Law Clinic onto the Canada Will Registry! Serving the Kingston community since 2010, the Queen's Elder Law Clinic offers free legal services to elders that may not have the resources to seek legal counsel.
