Hi everyone, I’m Sabrina, a Wills & Estates lawyer at Varity Law. Many people assume that you can receive your inheritance from the bank by just providing a death certificate and/or a Will to them. That is incorrect. When your relative passes, you must apply to the Court for an approval certificate through a legal process called probate. Only after you received this approval document, then you can receive your inheritance from the bank. There are only two exceptions to this rule – joint account owners and designated beneficiaries of RRSP and TFSA can get money from the bank by providing only a death certificate and their own IDs.
Unfortunately, having probate approval is only half the battle won. The 2nd part, called estate administration, is much more complicated and frustrating for three reasons.
First, there are many people with the same name who have bank accounts.
If the deceased has a common name, such as John Smith or Hong Li, don’t be surprised if the bank pulls up a list of 10 people with that name. Then, the bank needs to spend a considerable amount of time determining who the deceased is and identifying all the bank accounts associated with that person.
Second, the bank’s retail and investment departments are separate, and they don’t communicate with each other frequently.
Often, those two departments have completely separate in-branch and online systems. Therefore, the executor must verify with both the retail and investment departments to ensure they don’t miss any accounts. We had cases where the retail department claimed the deceased only had $10k with them, and then the investment department found another $500k invested with the same bank.
Third, no one is motivated to handle estate matters at the bank because such work is not counted towards their monthly quotas.
I personally find this last part very surprising. The first estate I’d ever administered was my mom’s estate when she passed away years ago. At the time, my firstborn was only 3 months old, and I honestly thought the estate appointment at the bank would take 30 minutes. Three hours later, the appointment was still not completed because the person handling the account was not trained in estate matters and lacked motivation to do so. After 6 months of back and forth, and so much agony, I finally got my inheritance. On the day I went to pick up the bank draft, I met the branch manager for the 1st time, who asked me if I wanted to invest my inheritance with them. In my mind, I was like, are you freakin kidding me? After all the agony and frustration your branch put me through during the hardest part of my life?
That was years ago. Now, after my legal team and I gained much more experience about how to motivate banks on estate matters, we can complete an estate appointment in 30 minutes and get our client’s inheritance within a month.
If you are stuck in a similar situation, please don’t be discouraged. Unfortunately, due to the three reasons mentioned above, it is normal to have difficulties getting your inheritance from the banks.
Read our case study on how we completed a complex estate administration in just 6–7 months to see how we’ve helped others navigate this process.
Need help with estate administration? Feel free to contact us by clicking HERE to make this process efficient and effortless.
