 Day 3 of Make-a-Will-Month. Chances are you are, or the person beside you is, will-less. While numbers have changed given a Covid boost and more online options, a survey conducted by Tim Hewson of LegalWills showed 62% of Canadians don't have a will and nearly 12% have an out-of-date one. Out of date could mean anything from a few tweaks are needed to a will so obsolete it's invalid (say, after remarriage or with improper witnessing, unclear language, missing signatures, or improper alterations).
People gave the following reasons for having no will (2023 Angus Reid Poll): 🙈 42%: they’re too young or have too few assets 🙉 24%: it's too expensive or too time-consuming 🙊 10%: don’t want to think about death or discuss details with a stranger 😱 24%: other. In a nutshell, people think wills are complicated, costly, and consume time they just don’t have. The truth is the most basic wills are simple, cheap, take less time, and are less painful than a trip to the dentist. As soon as someone reaches the age of majority, however little they have in assets, they need a will, if only to simplify things for family or others they care about. There are now free or affordable services to quickly create wills online that are much better than the old paper kits and much better than nothing at all. TIP: Complete an online will – if you have a simple situation, it’s quick, cheap, and easy to update. If your situation is more complicated, it provides excellent information that you’ll need and the questions you’ll need to think about before asking a lawyer to prepare a formal will. For how to decide where you fit on the simple-to-complicated spectrum, see https://lnkd.in/gA5qhDNW. If there’s no valid will, among the biggest losers are CHARITIES: intestacy laws don’t recognize them. The biggest winner may be someone the willmaker is estranged from or, if no heirs can be found, the Crown itself. TASKS to help bulletproof a will when it comes to charities? 1️⃣ Make sure any charity is correctly named with information including registration number and contacts. 2️⃣ Check the charity retains its registered status and remains worthy of your money. Just because a charity is big doesn’t make it good, as Charity Intelligence Canada says (https://lnkd.in/geUNyTdf). That’s because each year charitable status is revoked when audits reveal financial mismanagement/non-compliance or repeated failures to file information. Do a little more digging because the CRA Charities Directorate can’t suspend a charity or notify donors of an audit until it makes a final decision (British law allows prominent publication of a charity being under investigation). 3️⃣ Understand that ambiguities regarding charitable intentions may be left to the court to interpret… and other estate beneficiaries may be interested in seeing such gifts challenged. 4️⃣ Provide alternates in case the original gift cannot be completed.
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 This is the second day of Make-a-Will Month. When someone says some things never die, whoever “they” are can’t have been talking about wills, certainly not in Canada. Wills can, in fact, “die” and this can have deadly outcomes. A horror story as told to me: Once a widow and widower married, looking forward to many happy years together. In love, both were healthy. Updating their wills wasn’t the first priority after embarking on their new life together. Then the fickle fingers of fate snapped just like that. A short while after the wedding, the wife died. What the couple almost certainly didn’t know is that in some Canadian jurisdictions the will a person wrote before marriage is revoked upon marriage. Tying the knot can make existing wills null and void. What this meant in this case was that the wife died intestate – as if she had no will. Her assets, according to intestacy laws, went to her husband. This still could have been OK if he had understood what this meant and changed his will to respect her will’s bequests to her daughters by her first marriage, some charities, a few others. But he didn’t get the chance before he in turn died a few months later. This meant he also died intestate and under intestacy law both his and his second wife’s assets went to his adult children. Even at this point it could have been OK, but the man’s children, not respecting what his likely intentions were, refused to transfer his wife's assets to her daughters and other beneficiaries. In some Canadian jurisdictions, getting married automatically revokes any will written prior to marriage. This means not just someone’s second marriage, but marriage period. Marriage in B.C., Ontario, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Yukon does not revoke a will; marriage in Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, and Prince Edward Island revokes a will “unless it was made in contemplation of marriage” – updating to a post-wedding will before actually being married – or met limited other criteria. Even here, be careful. While this list shows Ontario does not revoke a will, this is limited to marriages occurring on or after January 1, 2022. It’s not retroactive and so doesn’t apply to people already married before that date. Unless they have an existing will made in contemplation of marriage or wrote a will after that date, they’ll be considered not to have a will and intestacy law will apply even if they still stand by their wishes as expressed in an otherwise duly executed will. Also, a few words can make all the difference, explains estate litigator Trevor Todd (https://lnkd.in/gJCVFVPv). TODAY’S NUDGE: if you know of someone getting married (or if, in Ontario, they were married before 2022), make sure they are aware of what the law where they live says about former wills. TODAY’S ENTREATY: Officiants and other marriage celebrants, please bring this information to the attention of those you are joining in matrimony before it’s too late. Today’s image? Charles Dickens, author of the poem about some things that never die https://lnkd.in/geyMaqZf).  It’s just a hop, skip, and jump from Halloween on Oct. 31st to November – Make a Will Month. This headline of the inimitable Margaret Atwood gave me the leap I needed for the first of 30 related posts. Each day will provide a nudge, a tip, a task, or an entreaty.
We all will leave a legacy and it’s up to each of us to decide what that will be. Margaret’s legacy includes 18 novels, 18 poetry volumes, 11 non-fiction books, 9 works of short fiction, and 2 graphic novels. She’s got two Booker Prizes, The Arthur C. Clarke Award, The Governor General's Award, The Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, and (particularly appropriate) The Franz Kafka Prize. She invented the LongPen among other things. She founded the Griffin Poetry Prize, co-founded the Writers' Trust of Canada, was the first contributor to the Future Library Project, and took on two heavyweights. She’s the caped defender of truth, justice, and the Canadian way. From interviews with Margaret Atwood, I’d guess she’d pooh-poohingly make light of her own death and legacy, though these topics are interwoven in many of her works. But I presumptuously believe she has a will to be read at her death and plans for what to do with her estate. I’ll go out on a limb and say she’s had great pleasure in naming beneficiaries and causes, and in rewriting her will with bon mots and barbs a-plenty (get her latest – Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts on sale November 4). TODAY’S NUDGE, which has a Hallowe’en-horror feel: On January 15, 2022, a person died of COVID-19 complications. Instead of being buried soon after as he wanted beside his father in a family-owned plot, and despite repeated directions and a court order directing that he be buried there, the deceased’s family and Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO) remained in a fierce legal battle with the cemetery's owner, September 21 Inc. There’d been an administrative problem in 2019, apparently involving the church where the cemetery was located, but the deceased’s family had a valid deed of sale from the previous owner. The deceased was finally buried on October 1, 2022 – 9.5 months after his death. Not content with that, September 21 Inc. continued a counter court case heard, which it lost on May 5, 2023 (the deceased’s family was awarded costs but unlikely sufficient for the hell they’d been put through). TODAY’S TIP: A will is just one part of a package of paperwork people need as much for those they leave behind as for themselves. TODAY’S TASKS:
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