Calgary Wills Lawyer
Suite 200, 1055 - 20th Avenue NW T2M 1E7 Calgary, AB, Canada

DISABLED ADULT CHILDREN VS. ADULT CHILDREN WHO ARE JUST BAD WITH MONEY When engaging in estate planning there are a number of tools that can be used to look after disabled family members, in particular, disabled adult children. For starters, a person can set up a testamentary trust through their will to provide for a disabled family member. Another estate planning strategy could involve contributing to a disabled adult child’s registered disability savings plan (RDSP) while y...Continue reading

YOUR PET IN YOUR WILL Should you include your pet in your will? Yes, maybe you should. Legally, your pet is considered personal property. That means you can leave your dog, cat, hamster, or salamander to a friend or family member in your will.... Sometimes people hear stories about an eccentric millionaire who left everything to their cat. At least in Alberta, cats and dogs can’t own property. Legally speaking, they are property. What you can do is create a trust, with the money in the trust to be used by a person or organization for the upkeep of your beloved parakeet. That being said, setting up a trust for one or more pets is likely overthinking things, unless perhaps your pet is a valuable racehorse who requires expensive professional care. In most cases, the best solution is to leave Fido to a close family member or friend, and to leave that family member or friend with a little extra money that will hopefully cover Fido’s living expenses for the rest of his life.

YOUR ACCOUNTANT AS EXECUTOR Should you appoint your accountant as your executor? That question is commonly asked by clients. There are pros and cons. On the pro side, your accountant is a professional who understands taxes, bookkeeping, and personal finances. Your accountant is likely familiar with your financial situation and your tax history.... On the con side, your accountant will charge your estate a pretty penny to act as your executor. Contrast that with a family-member executor who is also a beneficiary; that person will likely take on the role for free because they are also receiving something from your estate. Also, your accountant may die before you, or may retire before you end up dying. Appointing a financial institution (rather than a particular person such as your accountant) as your executor may solve the latter problem, but your estate will still end up paying a fair bit for the service. Whether it’s worth it to have someone outside of the family act as executor depends on the circumstances. If your estate is complex or your family members aren’t properly suited for the executor role, then a professional executor could make sense. On the other hand, if your estate is fairly simple, the value of the estate isn’t tremendously high, and you have people in your family who are reasonably capable, then using a family member as your executor probably makes more sense.

MY KIDS CAN'T HANDLE IT It’s common for parents to think that their adult children aren’t ready to act as executors or attorneys under powers of attorney, or that they don’t have the emotional fortitude to handle the difficult choices required of a representative in a personal directive, such as pulling the plug on a comatose parent. As parents you want to protect your children. While an adult child in their late teens or early twenties may not have the life experience or the... emotional maturity that you may want in a person administering your estate or making important decisions for you at the end of your life, an adult child in their thirties, forties or fifties hopefully has that level of maturity and experience. It’s not necessarily a good idea to appoint an adult child as your representative without taking into account their strengths and weaknesses, but it’s also not a good idea to view your adult child as vulnerable and emotionally fragile, unless they are in fact unusually vulnerable or particularly unequipped to handle the basic responsibilities of adult life. Putting the burden of executorship on your senior citizen sibling makes no sense if you have a mature and capable son or daughter. In most cases, personal representatives in estate planning should be spouses or common law partners or adult children. Usually, it’s only when your family is still quite young that you should be looking to brothers and sisters as representatives under wills, enduring powers of attorney, and personal directives. And if your kids really are helpless or irresponsible, they’ll probably make things miserable for the brother or sister that you appoint as your representative. In a situation like that, you may wish to consider appointing an institution as your executor or attorney under the power of attorney.

SHOULD YOU AND YOUR SPOUSE BOTH DO WILLS (AND AT THE SAME TIME)? In most cases, it’s a good idea for both spouses to do their wills, and to do them at the same time. Of course, the assumption I’m making is that the spouses are still committed to each other as life partners. If a relationship is actually breaking down, each spouse should be doing their own individual estate planning. But assuming that you and your spouse are in a happy and healthy relationship, then there are ...a number of reasons why it makes sense for both of you to engage in estate planning together as a couple. For starters, everyone should engage in estate planning. Even if you don’t have a lot of property, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing a will, an enduring power of attorney, and a personal directive. The latter two documents protect you in the event that you become mentally incompetent, and everyone should have that level of protection, regardless of net worth. Also, if a wealthy spouse dies and leaves everything to a poor spouse, then the poor spouse will later on have property that should be dealt with through a will. As well, it should be noted that just because one spouse has nominal ownership of property, that doesn’t mean that the other spouse doesn’t have a legal interest in that property based on matrimonial property principles. It’s also usually more efficient and less expensive if both spouses engage in estate planning at the same time. Most law firms have a special rate for couples doing their wills that is cheaper than the cost of two individual will packages. As well, from the point of view of consistency in things like the choice of guardians for minor children and the age when surviving children should receive their shares from an estate, it makes sense for a couple to do their wills together so that they’re both on the same page.

GOING ON A JOINT BANK ACCOUNT WITH MOM As an alternative to an enduring power of attorney, adult children will sometimes become joint bank account holders with their elderly parents. The idea behind this is to allow the child to pay the elderly parent’s bills and otherwise handle their finances. Sometimes the strategy is also employed to help the estate to avoid probate. Is such a strategy a good idea? In most cases, I’d recommend against this strategy. For starters, it puts ...the parent’s property at risk. If the child is ever sued by a third party, that third party may attempt to obtain the money that’s available in the joint bank account. Also, a parent who puts a child on an account as a joint owner is potentially opening themself up to financial abuse. The child could drain the account and the parent would have little recourse, other than perhaps to sue the child. As well, such a strategy frequently leads to conflict with siblings who aren’t listed on joint bank accounts. The parent will likely die before the adult child, and then the joint-owner child will become the sole owner of the bank account. If that happens, the other children of the deceased parent may end up suing the child whose name was on the joint account. It should also be noted that probate isn’t terribly costly in Alberta, and arguably serves the purpose of protecting the interests of estate beneficiaries, dependants of the deceased person, and genuine creditors of the deceased person. In many cases, probate will be necessary in any event, even if some of the assets are jointly owned. For those reasons, I’d strongly recommend having a parent do an enduring power of attorney, as opposed to making use of the joint ownership strategy. Doing an enduring power of attorney typically keeps everything above board and allows a child to legitimately assist a parent with their finances.