Wills, Trusts & Estates
-
October 08, 2025
Substantial estate compliance: Limit of court’s curative power
In June 2025, my colleague, Michael G. von Keitz, wrote an article that reviewed a trio of cases (Salmon v. Rombough, 2024 ONSC 1186; Re: O’Neill Estate, 2024 ONSC 2228; and Urback v. Canadian Cancer Society et al., 2025 ONSC 3313) each of which further clarified the boundaries of substantial compliance legislation in Ontario.
-
October 08, 2025
CIVIL PROCEDURE - Parties - Class or representative actions
Appeal by attorney general from Federal Court decision. There were two questions of law before the Federal Court. First, could the estate of a deceased member of a class action have claimed damages for breach of s. 11(h) Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms right? If the answer to this was yes, did provincial estates statutes providing for an “alive as of” date prohibit or limit recovery of those Charter damages?
-
October 07, 2025
Attorney General Sean Fraser tells SCC the law needs to protect people with ‘no voice’
There was a celebratory mood at the opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2025-26 court year, but Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser and other legal leaders delivered a sober message to the Ottawa courtroom packed with lawyers and judges.
-
October 07, 2025
The future of estate administration: Achieving efficiency by leveraging technology
As artificial intelligence (“AI”) and other technologies become increasingly sophisticated, it seems all but certain that success in the future will belong to those practitioners who find a way to incorporate technological advances into their practice.
-
October 07, 2025
Lawyer ordered to pay costs for non-disclosure of gen AI use and citing fake precedents in court
In a cautionary case for litigation lawyers who use generative artificial intelligence (AI) for court submissions, a Federal Court associate judge recently hit an immigration lawyer with personal costs for submitting two defective AI-generated precedents and for breaching the Federal Court’s requirement to disclose any generative AI use in court filings.
-
October 06, 2025
Saskatchewan to regulate non-lawyers in bid to increase access to justice
Saskatchewan has brought into force legislative changes that will allow “non-lawyer legal professionals” to deliver certain services to the public — something officials with the province’s law society say will enhance access to justice for “underserved” residents.
-
October 06, 2025
Family business succession: Don’t send in the clowns
In an earlier article in our series on business succession, Murray Gottheil quoted these words from author Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
-
October 02, 2025
Line crossed: IRCC’s proposed administrative monetary penalties should alarm all Canadian bars
The federal government is quietly implementing a regulatory framework that should alarm every lawyer in Canada, regardless of practice area. Under the guise of addressing immigration “ghost consultants,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has crafted administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) that grant it unprecedented authority to discipline lawyers — the same lawyers who routinely challenge that department’s decisions in court.
-
September 29, 2025
B.C. court rejects 25% property claim over decades-old conditional promise
The B.C. Supreme Court has rejected a claim to 25 per cent of the proceeds from a property sale, brought by individuals whose father had been promised a quarter share of the land if it had been successfully subdivided.
-
September 26, 2025
Ontario opening of the courts ceremony highlights digitization, reform of Rules of Civil Procedure
On Sept. 25, judges, attorneys general, leaders of law associations and others met for Ontario’s opening of the courts ceremony, discussing various strategies that have been and will be undertaken to improve access to justice. This included digitization and reformation of the Rules of Civil Procedure.