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December 16, 2024
Boosting the number of judges in Ontario’s Unified Family Court and Court of Appeal, making “bail and sentencing laws stricter,” and new civil remedies — and criminal penalties of up to $1 million for corporations — under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, were among the new measures proposed in the 2024 fall fiscal update by the minority Liberal government after Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland stunned Ottawa by resigning from the Cabinet a few hours earlier.
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December 16, 2024
Spiegel Sohmer and Ravinsky Ryan Lemoine have decided to merge and will operate under the new name of Spiegel Ryan as of Jan. 1, 2025.
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December 13, 2024
In the realm of estate litigation, the interpretation of will clauses that include options to purchase and rights of first refusal seems to be coming up more and more frequently. Recent cases like Cambareri v. Sorrenti, 2023 ONSC 4918, and Zboya v. Hicks, 2024 ABKB 525, to name a few, indicate that there is growing interest in will drafting and estate planning that includes options to purchase estate property, or alternatively, gives beneficiaries a right of first refusal to purchase such property.
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December 11, 2024
Ontario’s top court has outlined what happens to the right of survivorship if a property owner severs a joint tenancy, something a lawyer involved in the case is calling a useful clarification for a “murky area” of real estate law.
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December 10, 2024
In our last article with Law360 Canada, Palak Mahajan and I wrote about the relevance of the recent decision of Ingram v. Kulynych Estate, 2024 ONCA 678, with respect to limitation periods. Limitation periods continue to be an overarching factor that plays one of the most important roles of every file/case that comes through the door. Another case that exemplifies the significance of limitation periods is Shannon v. Hrabovsky, 2024 ONCA 188 (Shannon), by the Court of Appeal, which addressed the issue of when the discoverability principle applies to estate claims and whether the limitation period runs from the date of death of the testator.
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December 06, 2024
A recent news release from Aird & Berlis LLP announced the addition of Daniel Hunter, Linda Guma and Evan Pernica as associates.
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December 06, 2024
Appeal by Flanigan from dismissal of his application for family maintenance and support (FMS) against the estate of his late adult interdependent partner, Kirkland. Kirkland died on November 12, 2022, leaving her estate equally to her children in a will dated September 2, 2021, with no provision for Flanigan. The Court of King's Bench issued a grant of probate on February 9, 2023.
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December 02, 2024
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Arif Virani announced the appointment of Lindsay R. LeBlanc as a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Victoria, a Nov. 29 news release announced.
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December 02, 2024
Most courts in Canada now have the power to validate wills that do not comply with the requisite formalities of execution and submit them to probate, with the exception of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Northwest Territories. Ontario is the most recent province to introduce the will-validating power, having enacted s. 21.1 of the Succession Law Reform Act (the SLRA) on Jan. 1, 2022.
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November 29, 2024
While modern artificial intelligence (“AI”) has already proved an immensely useful tool, with IBM’s Watson serving as an early example of a natural language processor able to receive and respond to plain language inquiries in plain language with a high degree of accuracy, it has also proven to have its limitations. Newer systems, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, are becoming ubiquitous and, to the extent these systems are designed to be responsive to inquiries, they are limited by factors such as the clarity and precision of the questions posed to them.
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November 29, 2024
Ontario’s law society used its November Convocation to unveil a new working group focusing on the “long-term future” of the province’s paralegals and to codify rules around the confidentiality of information gathered in tribunal investigations.
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November 27, 2024
Find out what lawyers really think about their profession in Law360 Canada Pulse’s Lawyer Satisfaction Survey.
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November 26, 2024
Fines issued against Canadian financial institutions, businesses and individuals for violating anti-money laundering laws and regulations reached a record $26.1 million during the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to Canada’s anti-money laundering watchdog.
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November 26, 2024
November is “Make-a-Will Month” — an opportunity to highlight the critical importance of having a will. With almost half of Canadians lacking a will, it is vital to raise awareness about how this document can protect families and ensure that wishes are respected after death, especially for individuals with significant wealth or other complexities.
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November 26, 2024
A recent survey of the legal profession is showing high levels of satisfaction with things like collegiality and collaboration at their firms and opportunities for advancement, but there is one issue that continues to remain a problem and has no easy fix — stress.
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November 25, 2024
A Nova Scotia lawyer hopes the exoneration of a local funeral director in a case where the wrong body was cremated serves as a “wake-up call” for the province to update its “vague” rules governing the profession.
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November 25, 2024
A recent survey of lawyers is indicating overall satisfaction with many aspects of the profession, despite some lingering concerns about things like stress and compensation.
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November 21, 2024
According to Statistics Canada, more Canadians than ever before are adopting “a smarter and more connected lifestyle,” with Internet use amongst Canadians over the age of 14 in 2022 reaching 95 per cent.
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November 20, 2024
Directors of charitable corporations operating in Ontario are subject to strict requirements to act without personal benefit — meaning they cannot be paid for serving as directors or for other services unless authorized by court order or pursuant to Ontario Regulation 4/01 under the Charities Accounting Act (the Regulation).
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November 19, 2024
If public confidence is a litmus test for the health of the justice system, a new national poll suggests Canada’s courts have room to improve.
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November 18, 2024
We’ve all seen the Facebook profiles of departed friends that appear on our timelines, floating by like digital zombies. Although social media platforms like Facebook have introduced procedures such as memorialization and legacy contact to manage the accounts of deceased or incapacitated users, many remain in cyber-limbo due to a lack of a proactive digital legacy plan, as any estate planning lawyer will tell you.
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November 15, 2024
With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Canadian courts are under increasing pressure to address its impact. While some view AI as a possible threat to the rule of law and democracy within Canada’s justice system, AI also holds promise for enhancing court operations, reducing workloads, supporting judicial functions and improving access to justice.
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November 14, 2024
The Supreme Court of Canada’s removal of thousands of pre-1970 (mostly unilingual-English) judgments from its website won’t end an unprecedented Federal Court lawsuit that aims to compel the top court’s registry to fix alleged violations of the Official Languages Act by translating the court’s unilingual decisions into the other official language, says the plaintiff language rights group Droits collectifs Québec.
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November 14, 2024
The decision in Ingram v. Kulynych Estate, 2024 ONCA 678 (Ingram), by the Ontario Court of Appeal addressed whether the 10-year limitation period under s. 4 of the Real Property Limitations Act R.S.O. 1990, c. L.15 (RPLA) applies to the respondent, Kathleen Ingram’s, constructive trust and unjust enrichment claim against Henry Kulynych’s estate rather than the two-year period under s. 38(3) of the Trustee Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. T.23 (Trustee Act).
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November 11, 2024
In my recent article “Estate freezes: An icebreaker,” I discussed how an estate freeze can be used to “lock in” the value of a family business’ shares at a given point in time and pass on the growth of that business to the business owner’s children. I briefly touched on some of the potential pitfalls that can complicate the execution and maintenance of an estate freeze. One of these complications — and the source of much of the litigation surrounding estate freezes — is the availability of the oppression remedy to the company’s shareholders.