ExpertZoom
By Stéphanie Fournier
May 20th, 2026
“It’s Not Like That” is a fictional story, but the legal and financial situation it depicts affects hundreds of thousands of Canadian families every year…
When Amazon Prime Video launched It’s Not Like That globally on May 15, 2026, Scott Foley stepped into one of television’s most emotionally charged archetypes: the recently widowed father trying to hold his family together. In the series, Foley plays Malcolm, a pastor who has lost his spouse and must navigate raising three children while rebuilding his life.
Malcolm’s situation in It’s Not Like That is emotionally resonant because it is real. Across Canada, widowed parents face financial and legal decisions they were never prepared for, often within weeks of a devastating loss.
In Canada, the death of a spouse without a current estate plan creates a cascade of legal complications that often falls hardest on the surviving children. If you are a parent —married, common-law, or single— the questions Malcolm faces are the same questions any estate lawyer would ask you to answer before it is too late.
