This article explores how the new tax laws in 2025 could affect your estate plan, the potential impact on estate tax exemptions, gifting strategies, trust structures, and capital gains taxes, and what actions you should take to protect your estate. 09 Jan

How New Tax Laws Could Affect Your Estate Plan: 2025

Imagine being able to prove that a handwritten note in your notebook could be your last will and testament. That is exactly what the newest Ontario concept in estates law, “substantial compliance,” strives to do... 22 Nov

Succession Law Reform Act (SLRA): Substantial Compliance

If an account holder passes away or loses capacity, their legal representatives may not be able to access their digital assets held by a virtual custodian. Alberta Law Reform Institute recommends authorizing fiduciaries to access digital assets through new legislation. 13 Nov

Authorizing Fiduciaries to Access Digital Assets

Familial compositions and societal norms have changed drastically. The law cannot remain static and must reflect changing social norms in order to properly serve society’s diverse and ever-evolving needs. 08 Oct

Familial Relationships in Ontario’s Succession Law Reform Act

Learn why fiduciary access to digital assets matters and how a new Alberta Act would help facilitate access... 07 Aug

Alberta Law Reform: Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets

Predatory Probate Lending: an Epidemic in Need of Law Reform? 22 May

Predatory Probate Lending: an Epidemic in Need of Law Reform?

As generative AI brings dead celebrities back to life, we must rethink the rights of the deceased. Changes are due in privacy, consumer protection and property laws, University at Buffalo legal scholar Mark Bartholomew says... 24 Jan

Generative AI: Rethinking the Legal Rights of the Deceased

In light of UK broadcaster Esther Rantzen’s revelation that she has considered assisted dying, we look at the policies of other countries 20 Dec

Assisted Dying Around the World: Where and When it is Allowed

Estate Law Reform is urgent and imperative to protect elders from financial abuse: specifically in the areas of power of attorneys, intervivos gifts, and will planning. 23 Oct

Elder Abuse Epidemic: Urgent Need for Estate Law Reform

Couples may have many reasons for not getting married, but when a common law partner dies without a will, the living partner is left legally vulnerable. Here’s what you need to know... 16 Feb

Complications for ‘Legally Vulnerable’ Common Law Couples 

Even "under-the-radar" decisions, by the U.S. Supreme Court, have far-reaching consequences and significant impact on the law. This article highlights five Supreme Court decisions that have impacted estate planning and elder law. 01 Jun

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions that Impacted Estate & Elder Law

The BC Court of Appeal has confirmed that the removal and use of human reproductive materials (sperm, ova, and embryos) both during one’s life, and after one’s death, requires prior and informed written consent. 01 Dec

Case Study: Posthumous Use of Human Reproductive Material