Protect Your Loved Ones – Why Making Your Will Matters

Wills are the cornerstone of most financial and estate plans. Wills designate who is your estate executor or Ontario estate trustee. Executors control your estate. Estates include all the stuff that you leave behind when you’re gone.

Why Wills are Important

Wills are more than a letter setting out your last wishes. Wills must comply with legal requirements and satisfy your legal obligations. These legal obligations can be to spouses, dependants and those who have relied on your promises to their detriment. Shareholder agreements and marriage contracts can also create legal obligations.

Do you know what your legal obligations are? Better talk with a lawyer to meet your obligations. If you don’t, you can expect trouble when you are gone.

It is a mistake to assume your spouse will inherit everything without a will. Only married spouses have inheritance rights in Ontario.

Avoid Government Intestate Laws

If you have no will, the government decides who inherits your estate based on their intestate laws. These intestate laws are rigid and not flexible.

Courts decide who controls your stuff. Your relatives may need to hire lawyers for court proceedings to decide who controls your stuff. Courts appoint estate trustees without a will. Estate trustees without a will must reside in Ontario. Government rules also decide who inherits and when. You can’t support your favourite charities or those with special needs unless you make your will.

What if you don’t make a will? Your relatives or people that you may not have spoken to in decades may inherit all your stuff.

Your Will Can Reduce Taxes

How much do you pay in taxes at death?

Don’t worry. You can’t avoid paying your debts by dying without a will. Courts must appoint someone to pay your debts and taxes if you don’t make your will. The government also takes as much tax as it can if you have no will.

How to Get Started

Need help planning your will or handling an estate with or without a will? Contact me for a meeting. I have solved estate problems for decades by going to court or through mediation.

I offer you a meeting to discuss your needs by Zoom or in-person in my Toronto west end office. Arrange your no-obligation meeting today.

I am a Certified Specialist in Estates and Trusts Law. I can give you expert tips to end your estate worries.