Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

When you sign a will, the will is intended after your death to govern the distribution of your estate in keeping with your wishes.  A will is the direction to your executor about which people, organizations or causes you want to benefit. 

Preparing a will is serious business.  In British Columbia, if you do not have a will, your estate will be treated as an “intestacy” and its ...

A friend called the other day distressed at the conduct of her elder and only sibling.  He had said and done mean things, and taken financial and emotional advantage of their aging mother, now in a care home.  The brother was a sponger.  He lived rent and expense-free in mum’s home despite efforts to get him to leave.  He had not worked in years and was taking advantage of his mum.  My ...

Can commercial tenants suffering the effects of the pandemic on their business unilaterally stop paying rent?

In a recently reported decision of the B.C. Supreme Court, Hudson’s Bay Company ULC v. Pensionfund Investment Ltd., 2020 BCSC 1959, the court attempted to balance the competing and urgent interests of commercial landlords and tenants during the current ...

It is common for someone writing a will to appoint as their executor a family member or friend.  Sometimes this is done without understanding what it means to be an executor.  Sometimes the ability and propriety of the proposed executor is not considered.  Often, the relationship between the proposed executor and the will-maker changes after the will has been written.  ...

“The law of succession is among the most archaic areas of private law, and British Columbia legislation dealing with various aspects of succession is highly fragmented, spread throughout a forest of statutes.”

Wills, Estates and Succession,
A Modern Legal Framework,
B.C. Law Institute, 2006

Those words were written nearly a decade ago and described, in brief, the ...

Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about a Court of Appeal decision that upheld, and arguably extended, the enforceability of liability waivers and releases signed by customers of commercial enterprises.  That particular case involved zip-lining, an activity the court described as an inherently risky recreational adventure.  While that decision served as confirmation ...

An executor, absent consent or a court order, must not make any distribution of estate assets to beneficiaries of a will for six months following the grant of probate. This is a statutory prohibition in section 12 of the Wills Variation Act (the “WVA”). There is a serious risk to executors who make early distribution.

This six month prohibition is intended to balance ...

Despite the advice of professionals to the contrary, families often fail to discuss estate matters with each other.  Parents may not even say they have a will, let alone discuss its contents or location.  This may leave the surviving family trying to figure out the affairs of their deceased parent without knowing where to start.  The most important information is probably in the ...

Despite the intentions of a testator and the best drafting skills of their lawyer, there are often occasions when there is an ambiguity or apparent error in the resulting will.  These can be anything from small typographical mistakes through to directly conflicting descriptions of a testator’s assets, beneficiaries or wishes.  The difficulty for an executor is trying to ...

It is always a difficult situation when a loved one develops some form of dementia and gradually slips into incapacity.  It is even more troubling when well-meaning family members end up in a legal dispute over who should assume legal responsibility for the financial and personal care of the patient.  In recent years, Canadian legislatures have passed laws intended to make ...