Must you have a Will? Not necessarily.
In Ontario, estate distribution can happen automatically after death or through probate.
Automatically – this includes all assets that are jointly owned with another person, or a group of people. For instance, joint bank accounts with your spouse, or joint tenants with your son as stated on the property deed. It also includes any funds with a designated beneficiary – such as your life insurance naming Joe Smith, your son, as the beneficiary. Caution here: you must specify who is the beneficiary (e.g. my son, Joe Smith), and not just define it vaguely like “my children”.
Through probate – this includes all other assets – those assets will be subject to probate taxes and must go through the Estate Court before they can be distributed to the beneficiaries. This is much easier with a Will, which would specify who gets what. Without a Will, estate may only be distributed according to relevant legislations, and estate distribution would have longer processing times & likely more disputes.
In this case, our client mainly held real estate, liquid funds, and insurance products. Instead of doing a Will for him, we updated the ownership on his real estate to be joint tenants with his beneficiaries. Also, he made all of his bank accounts joint accounts with the beneficiaries, and specified the beneficiaries to all his insurance products. Upon his passing, we were able to immediately transfer all of his assets to the beneficiaries (instead of waiting for the Estate Court’s approval) and they were not subject to probate taxes.
However, this solution may not work for everyone, because as soon as the beneficiaries are added as joint owners or joint tenants, they share equal control of the assets before our client passes away. So if our client lived longer and decided to sell the property instead, he would require the written consent of all joint tenants. Similarly, his beneficiaries would be able to use any funds within their joint accounts before he passes away.
For your specific Wills & Estates Planning, feel free to book a free consultation viagran 905-597-9357 or email hello@varitylaw.ca
