Published on All About Estates
by Karen La Caprara on June 21st, 2024
This being my first All About Estates blog, I thought I would make it a personal one. So, as an introduction, I decided that I would share my family experience that contributed to my decision to practice in the area of wills and estates. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of all that went down, for various reasons, including that much of it I don’t know as I was a child at the time. Suffice it to say, if I included all of the unverified details that I’ve heard over the years, you might think it could be turned into a very bingeable HBO or Netflix series.
My maternal grandparents were both born to working class parents with limited assets. My grandfather, however, though not a terribly wonderful husband or father, had a mind for business and managed, with very little education, to build up quite a bit of wealth. An amount that by all accounts should have been more than enough to provide for his family, including my grandmother, my mother and her siblings, and also to support his grandchildren’s education and more.
Please note that I received my mother’s permission to share this story – she even encouraged me to share more of the details. Despite the introduction though, my intention is not to tell a juicy story but rather to provide another illustration (unfortunately, there are many) of how important a well-structured and realistic estate plan is. The executors/trustees and my grandmother, as noted, are deceased.
Karen La Caprara, Counsel, at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP
