Murray Lott
Senior Lawyer
Appoints someone to look after your affairs following death, with one or two back-ups;Creates a guardian and a trustee to look after your children while they are young; Makes gifts to special people or charities of cash or specific items; Leaves the residue of your estate to your spouse, or children, or others; Will be “mirror image” for spouses.
Delegates authority to make financial decisions on your behalf; Either with your authorization, or; If you are incapable of knowing what you are doing; Requires high level of trustworthiness.
Delegates authority to give or refuse medical consent; And authorizes your representative to make decisions about senior care, and all of the day-to-day decisions about your life; If you are unable to do so for yourself;Also describes the kind of treatment you would like if you reach the point of medical no return.
For anyone over 50; Easy for you to do, a lot harder for your kids or friends to do for you!
We also suggest that you leave your Estate Planning documents with Delta Law Office for free, life time, secure and controlled safe keeping in our bank vault.
Our estate planning process includes two important stages:
1. Initial advice, document drafting, review and execution
2. Future storage and control of your documents and assistance to your personal representatives when the time comes.
We believe our packages are a safe, worry-free and life-time approach to your estate planning. Please review the details:
- Estate planning advice
- Initial meeting to discuss options and make first decisions
- Drafts of wills emailed to you for review, questions and further decisions
- Sign-up meeting to complete documents, discuss storage and control of documents, and post-planning options
- Documents included:
- Life-time, “One-Stop Shopping” storage of, and controlled access to, your documents in our fire-safe bank vault
- Free Certified Copies of your documents to your personal representatives when time comes for them to act
- Free summary advice to your personal representatives when time comes for then to act
- Estate planning advice
- Initial meeting to discuss options and make first decisions
- Draft of will emailed to you for review, questions and further decisions
- Sign-up meeting to complete documents, discuss storage and control of documents, and post-planning options
- Documents included:
- Life-time, “One-Stop Shopping” storage of, and controlled access to, your documents in our fire-safe bank vault
- Free Certified Copies of your documents to your personal representatives when time comes for them to act
- Free summary advice to your personal representatives when time comes for then to act
Our Team works together closely to provide you with assistance on any questions you may have throughout the process. There is always someone available to assist you with your case.
Young families looking to protect their children in the event of both parents’ deaths have two main tools to use in estate planning: Guardianship, and Trusts for Minors. A Guardian is a person appointed to look after the minor children if their parents die. Ideally it will be someone in the same community and from the same family – a sibling with children of their own is often the best – but the situation is more challenging where there are no family members, or they live far away, or may be inappropriate. Or don’t want to do it: Make sure you ask your guardian(s) if they want the job before naming them! The appointment of a guardian is not “written in stone” and the courts can always change it to someone more appropriate if the person you have appointed is no longer the best choice for the kids, perhaps because they have died, moved, or no longer want the job.
Most modern wills contain a Trust for Minors provision, in case some part of the estate ends up going to children. Usually their share of the money will be
invested for each child until they are a specified age, now often 21 or 25 years. Your trustee (usually the same person as your executor) will have the
power to dip into the trust fund to pay for things like school, vacations, or living costs while the child is still a minor, and the child gets the balance
after they hit the target age.
You can include or exclude whomever you want in your Will, but BC law allows your spouse or children to go to court to vary your Will. Step-children do not have that right; common-law spouses do.
On a claim to vary a Will, the Court will evaluate whether you gave valid reasons for doing so. The judge will consider the size of the estate, your relationship with the person making the challenge, and the present financial circumstances of all parties. The court is looking for a “moral duty” owed by the will-maker to their family.
If you wish to treat your children unequally or leave a small amount for your spouse, you should attach a detailed memorandum to your Will describing the reasons for your decision. The memorandum needs to be specific; for example, “My child stole money from me and has not seen me in 10 years.” Or perhaps “I already provided my child with many gifts and loans during my life-time.” There is no magic in making a small gift ($1.00 or some other amount) to try to protect your Will.
Only assets that pass through your Will can be challenged. Designated beneficiaries or trusts can avoid probate and thus a challenge to the Will.
Parents often help out their children – down payment on a new home, debt relief – in unequal ways: Not all children have the same needs. How can you make your will fair to the others who did not receive anything during your life? Gifts to children are often made without a clear agreement as to repayment; there may be no more than a vague intention that “we’d like the money back some day”. Or it may in fact be a loan, which the child intended to pay back but never quite got around to. Regardless of the original intention, your Will provides a good opportunity to clear up your intentions with little disruption to your child. There are two simple ways to do this. First, if you intended the money to be an outright gift, simply say so in the Will: “I forgive repayment of any money given to my children – or to my child John – during my life time.” That child will share equally in your Estate. Alternatively, you can even things out with the other children by a simple process called “hotch pot”; that is, bring the gift into the assets of the Estate, and then deduct it from that child’s share as a prepayment. For example, you have three children and a $1M estate. You lent your son $200K as a down payment on his new house. Your executor can add that $200K to your Estate to make it $1.2M. Each child then gets 1/3 or $400K, except your son has already received an advance, and so would receive $200K. An added bonus of this process is that it is fair and so would be hard to challenge in court, even though your children are receiving different amounts from your Estate.
