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October 29, 2025
What if we told you having the most babies in a decade could make you a millionaire? In 1926, this wasn’t a hypothetical, it was the premise of one of the most bizarre contests in legal history.
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October 29, 2025
The Substitute Decisions Act outlines the steps needed to appoint a guardian in a variety of circumstances. The appointment of a guardian under the Act may become necessary if a person becomes incapable without having already executed a power of attorney appointing someone to make decisions on their behalf during their incapacity. In other cases, an incapable person may have already executed a POA, but the attorney, for whatever reason, is no longer suitable.
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October 28, 2025
Counsel who “thumb their noses” at the Federal Court’s requirement to disclose any and all generative AI they used to create court filings will find that the national trial court “won’t hesitate” to ding them with personal costs or initiate contempt proceedings, warns Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton.
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October 28, 2025
In Ontario, an estate trustee during litigation (ETDL) does not have the power to distribute the residue of an estate, despite having all the rights and powers of a general administrator: see s. 28 of the Estates Act. However, this rule does not mean that an ETDL cannot make payments from the residue of an estate.
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October 24, 2025
As every estate lawyer worth their salt knows, the amount of careful analysis and due diligence that good, individualized estate planning requires cannot be overstated. Importantly, this process involves determining all the assets a testator has an interest in, how such interest is held, and finally how they would like to dispose of or pass on such interest(s) in their estate planning documents.
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October 23, 2025
I am no fan of in-person discoveries or mediation, purely from a selfish perspective of my time. Virtual discovery and mediation allow us to be more efficient with our time and our clients’ money. While I am not advocating for a return to all discoveries and mediations being in person, there is no doubt that something is missing.
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October 23, 2025
In an increasingly global society, it is no longer uncommon for an individual to pass away owning property or financial assets or maintaining family ties across multiple countries. When a person’s estate spans multiple jurisdictions, the administration and distribution process quickly becomes fraught with complexity.
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October 22, 2025
Three provinces are holding the 10th annual National Access to Justice Week later this month. Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are listed as hosing the event, which runs this year from Oct. 27 to 31 and is being quarterbacked by the Action Group on Access to Justice (TAG).
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October 22, 2025
John Israel Galambos has returned to Miller Thomson’s Montreal office as a partner in the firm’s tax group, effective Oct. 20, 2025.
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October 22, 2025
Every family has its dynamics — caring children, dominant personalities, financial dependence, and sometimes subtle power imbalances. When an elderly parent signs a will or power of attorney in such an environment, questions often arise: was this truly their decision or was their hand guided by someone else?
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October 21, 2025
The Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) call centres, which are supposed to help individuals and businesses with their tax queries, frequently dispense inaccurate and/or incomplete information and make Canadians wait unacceptably long times to get it, according to the latest review by the auditor general of Canada.
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October 21, 2025
The Supreme Court of Canada’s busy and diverse fall session includes weighty constitutional, criminal and Aboriginal law appeals that have attracted the participation of dozens of interveners. By the time the top court’s fall session ends on Dec. 12, 2025, the court will have heard some 20 cases, split between civil and criminal appeals.
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October 20, 2025
Over the last three decades the role of the estate planning lawyer has greatly expanded with the advent in the 1990s in Ontario of modern legislation dealing with substitute decision-making, including powers of attorney for property and for personal care.
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October 15, 2025
When a person loses the ability to manage their finances or personal care, a power of attorney can become a powerful tool. It allows someone — the attorney — to step into the grantor’s shoes and make critical decisions about their property, health and daily life. But with power comes responsibility, and sometimes, abuse.
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October 10, 2025
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 in a Quebec appeal that filing and serving a notice to seize property counts as a judicial application interrupting the 10-year deadline to collect payment on a judgment — thereby restarting for a further 10 years the “extinctive prescription” period (comparable to a limitation period in the common law provinces) that applies to rights resulting from most money judgments under art. 2924 of the Civil Code of Québec.
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October 09, 2025
It’s a story estate lawyers know all too well: someone decides to “save a few bucks” by writing their own will — only for the family to end up spending thousands in legal fees after their death. While homemade wills might seem like a simple solution, the reality is far more complicated. The law sets out strict requirements for how a will must be made, and even the smallest misstep can leave your loved ones in legal limbo.
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October 08, 2025
Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser has pushed back against the demands of five premiers that Ottawa should drop its novel arguments at the Supreme Court that there are substantive constraints on governments’ powers to invoke the Charter’s s. 33 “notwithstanding” clause — arguments that those five provinces contend “represent a complete disavowal of the constitutional bargain that brought the Charter into being” in 1982.
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October 08, 2025
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.
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October 08, 2025
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?
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October 07, 2025
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.
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October 07, 2025
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.
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October 07, 2025
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.
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October 06, 2025
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.
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October 06, 2025
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.”
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October 02, 2025
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.