 I want to welcome you here today to I think it's a fifth this year of the Shulik schools of law mini lecture on law and this one is basically on your will and you what you have to know about will so maybe some of the things that you don't want to know. The topic is joined in my mind and I think in practice with two other documents that when you decide to draw a will you should look at and the first document is a power of attorney and the second document is a personal care directive. These are extremely important documents which should be discussed at least at the time of the making of your will. The first question that you're going to ask me and I get this right is why have a will? Why do you have to have a will? Well the obvious thing is that for some of us our estate represents the economic fruits of a lifetime and it would be a pity if it devolved around the next generation in a way or to whom one didn't want and I put it to you and I am no shill for the lawyer the practicing lawyer but that in order to do anything but the simplest will and I know all you think your will is simple not so but all but the simplest will you really do need some lawyerly input some lawyerly support in drawing up a will and you'll find that when you start pricing them that generally speaking in practice wills are lost leaders so they're not that expensive. Now however there are other good reasons for having a will just because you want what you have to go to the right people at the right time in the right way the other reason is if you don't have a will then your property does devolve on death but according to a government drawn will which is called the Intestate Succession Act and there are aspects of the Intestate Succession Act which I don't think represent contemporary values. For example when you get a government drawing will depending on the numbers there's a good chance that this person might inherit kind of nice picture isn't it but I look at that picture think a little boy and I think of the sleepless nights and I think of the terrible twos and then that period just before teenagerhood and then teenagerhood and I think to myself that as far as my state is concerned and I suspect yours you don't want to share it with your kids not immediately and so this aspect of a government drawn will where the kids get part of the will is probably unacceptable to most people and in other words they can't afford it either. So if you have a government drawn will there is a possibility that some parts of the estate especially in a married situation will go to the kids when there's a surviving spouse and mostly people don't want that result. Another problem and I think it's a problem that I find with my classes I'm just shocked and sometimes it's hard in practice situations to investigate is that many more people nowadays are living common law and what they don't understand I have more and more students tell me that living common law nowadays in this liberal society of Canada is just like being legally married not so. On death the common law spouse in Nova Scotia gets nothing inherits nothing and so for the common law spouse to inherit a Nova Scotia they must be in the will. Now there are ways of getting around this I understand in fact this is what I write about and this is how a lot of other lawyers make a lot of money but I just hold it close to yourself and say that if I'm a common law spouse I won't inherit under a government will I will under a private will a privately drawn will if the person names me in that will. And I can think of a couple of cases in Nova Scotia where this was played out and they're really quite shocking in some ways one case one early case two people a partner husband or two spouses partner spouses but not married not legally married lived together for 10 years and they had two kids and the husband who's a great fan of motorcycles died in a crash immediately the husband died his parents went to court to sue for his oldest fate over his common law spouse and his two young kids which I find extraordinary but sometimes it's only on death and when money's concerned that you really find out what families are about I guess anyway the court the court said well we're going to take the illegitimate out of illegitimate children and all children are children and they inherit from their father but as far as the spouse was concerned she didn't ask nor did she get a nickel from that estate so it is a word to the wise. Another example of a case in Nova Scotia by common law spouses was a case that went to the Supreme Court of Canada and the court said well if you are a common law spouse you must have made some sort of conscious decision not to share a property and I really agree with the sole dissenting and sole female member of that court who said if marriage functions like if a relationship functions like marriage it should be treated in law like it is marriage but notwithstanding that the court said no in this case a common law spouse couldn't inherit so that's another reason for having a will. Well you might think well I'm a dink dual income no kids fancy free I've got a partner but so what. Well there's something called the Survivor Ships Act in Nova Scotia and in my picture here that's Jack and Jill and they're going skydiving and I understand there's been quite a few accidents over time and skydiving. Where you die with your partner in a common accident the law of Nova Scotia says that the older dies first and then the younger and you say so what but if you're relying on a government drawn will that means the older partner usually the man is a year too older he dies first here's property flows to the younger partner the wife and then her property because she's dead too flows to her parents so that you have a funny situation and a professional couple where they die all their money ends up on one side of the family or on the other so even if you're professional partner with the partners with no kids you want to have a will. There are lots of other reasons for having a will you can leave specific personal effects to friends or gifts to favorite charities and you can make provision for this person who you may dearly love. My colleague bond black in the law school would like to attribute to this person a personality of some sorts in law in any case the fact is that we own pets now my cat thinks she owns persons but she is under a misapprehension. Leona Hemsley the notorious hotel queen actually left property to her dog and it was several millions of dollars and I read an article about the major problems facing the caretakers of this dog with such you know serious money and and a heavy onus and the main problem was that they were afraid the dog was going to be kidnapped. Now I don't think when we're preparing or looking after our animals that we're going to worry about them being kidnapped but what we can do is we can set up small truss in order as in the case of my cat to keep the cat the dog and kibble and catnip or whatever their druthers so you can deal with animals and wills animals cannot inherit like people but you can set up trust so that they'll be provided for until they die. Oh a trust is just a mechanism where someone says I will hold property the dog and I will do things about that dog according to agreement between you and me basically a trust is just a person who will carry out certain conditions of agreement that they trust he agrees to. We have trust all the time when we have a will for example we give gifts directly to our adult children but if we have children say two three underage we give gifts to the children to be held in trust for them that is an older person holds the money for their benefit. There's also there is a number of reasons for having a will but there are also instances where the will is not necessary. Many of you answer just a minute many of you have the situation where you designate the beneficiary of your insurance proceeds in the insurance contract. Where you designate who gets your RRSP proceeds in the bank contract. Where you designate where you get your tax-free savings plans in the tax-free saving plan contract and of course among married people in Nova Scotia and unmarried people many many hold houses in joint tenancy. Whether we hold houses in joint tenancy or whether we have these special kinds of property where you don't need a will insurance RRSP's tax-free savings plans pension plans. These kinds of properties are not influenced or dealt with by a will unless particular pains are taken to include them in a will which usually is not done. The significance of these kinds of properties and will planning is that at the time that you make your will the joint tenancy and the designations will be examined by you and your advisor. Part of the problem of designating your pension death benefits or your RRSP is that designations unlike wills are not avoided by a new marriage. Neither are they affected by your divorce so that one of my assistants inherited a fair amount of money on the death of her ex-spouse because he forgot to change the designation. She felt it was only her just do of course. He forgot to change the designation so when you make a will your lawyer should make you look through all your designations and make sure you now have the proper beneficiaries in these designations. This happened to me or a colleague of mine who had been at Dalhousie for 20 years. When he joined Dalhousie he said the pension benefit death benefits would go to his parents. He was single and young 21 years later he had acquired a wife a child and his parents were comfortably off so and he had still left the designation to his parents so he was quite shocked that he had no there's nothing in a designation saying an insurance or in a pension plan and an RRSP there's nothing really that would force you to review them but you should and one of the occasions in which you should review designations is on the making of your will or on the review of your will. Making a will is also a opportunity for baby boomers in particular to review estate planning options and the estate planning options don't have to necessarily accrue only to those who have a lot of money. Estate planning options or tax options are might be something that you can discuss with your advisor when they're making a will. For example what I find working in the area of disabilities is that many families who have members with disabilities do not take advantage of the tax provisions given to people with disabilities in Canada and the reason of this is essentially a shocking one that they are so complex so intertwined so complicated that many people just sort of give up and trying to wade their way around the different benefits are given to people with persons with disabilities or given to people with disabilities and so the making your will gives you the opportunity to look at some benefits that might be available to your family and frankly one of the big things that families want to do with persons with disabilities is they want them to do both one inherit something and two not have their social welfare benefits eliminated and that is in as you can see at least for a short period in conflict but there are ways quite easy ways to eliminate this conflict and so that's one thing in making your will if you have a beneficiary who might be on social welfare benefit benefits to look at some of the special trust that can be set up to eliminate this problem but you can't do everything you want when you make your will and your will is limited by I say four separate things your will is limited by the matrimonial property act in Nova Scotia whatever you do in Nova Scotia you must first face the matrimonial property act which means that your will takes place after the matrimonial property act does its deed so what does the matrimonial property act in Nova Scotia say it says basically that legally married legally married not common law legally married spouses have a presumptive 50 percent share to the quote matrimonial assets of the couple when they separate when they divorce or when they die so before you even get to your will you have to go through the matrimonial property act now you know and I know that there are ways to reduce entitlements under matrimonial property act particularly with egregiously bad conduct a very short marriage is that's that is correct but for many of us what we're looking at is sharing our assets 50 50 with our legally married spouse it should be clear then that if someone dies the survivor gets 50% of the matrimonial assets and it's only what's left over in the deceased estate that gets treatment by either the government will or the the actual private will now there's two things that are left out of matrimonial assets and I think it's very important for you to understand that two things that are not that don't go through the matrimonial assets and just go through wills and the first thing is business assets any business assets that are not jointly owned by the spouse basically are not subject to matrimonial assets matrimonial property law this law is going to be changed very soon but it hasn't been changed so I have to tell you the laws it is so if dad runs a construction company and it's run separate from everything else then that construction company is business assets and it is not divisible under the matrimonial property act this position in Nova Scotia is considered rather regressive and is I think unique in Canada in so far as instead of looking at matrimonial assets and saying all assets are thrown into the pot Nova Scotia says only matrimonial assets and they exclude a great source of wealth which is business assets the second thing that you want to pay attention to and this this is some significance and some families I'd like to hear if you've had this particular issue but inheritance says if you inherit something and then you die where does that inheritance go well the rule so far in Nova Scotia is if you get an inheritance it goes into the matrimonial property and has to be shared as long as that inheritance is used in family activities so take an example of a cottage if you have a cottage up at Tana Magoosh and you inherit it from your mother for example and you take your wife and kids down there over summer and they swim and they do all the wonderful things that people do in Tata Magoosh well that's obviously a family asset and has to be shared on death but what happens if you have a cottage in Tata Magoosh which you inherit and you rented out and you take the rental income and you put it in a separate bank account not a family bank account well that wouldn't be a family asset and therefore wouldn't be inheritable or wouldn't be subject to the matrimonial property act so what I say here and the first thing you have to recognize is figure out what the deceased person has to give under the will because the deceased person doesn't give anything under the will until you look through the operation and application of the matrimonial property act someone had a question here and am I well be honored or what oh I think that's very important that you ask that because an animal rightly or wrongly is just property so I mean subject to animal control things and whatever no you gift in fact you should gift your dog yeah to whom if you want to look after them and probably set up a trust so the person who's looking after them will have something some money for bet fees and whatever yes oh shares yeah oh right the question is if a person had a lot of shares would they be considered investments would they be considered matrimonial properties or or not and the answer is generally the courts have not been very happy about seeing exemptions and exclusions from the matrimonial property law and so they have tended to see RSPs and tax-free savings plans and that sort of thing minor investments where you use a dividends to finance family vacation as matrimonial property now if you get a big chunk that would be different yes if they're inherited it as long as you're using them for family purposes now if they get separated that's a different thing but it was quite interesting I think the court said very early on that amount saved in an RSP for retirement were family assets I'm not saying that all wouldn't be I'm just saying that a little out of the matter yes I'll find you does the matrimonial property act go in the finding what the assets are example if you know if you wanted to leave items in your estate to your grandchildren yeah she takes half and then you just got half to to bequeath yes yes you can that's what's called or can be called a mutual will and it's becoming more of use now that it used to be which is what it is is a will that you draw up and you and I'm not talking about it in detail here because it's tricky to do it you say you're the husband I draw up draw my will in a certain way on condition you draw up your will in a certain way it's usually but not always me to you for life you to me for life and then to common beneficiaries that we agree upon so you can you can do that as a mutual will you can do but is it's not use much and I say to my clients well I'll use it but I'm not absolutely certain it'll work for a lot of reasons we haven't got time to go into it but that's that's one way of looking at it the other way frankly is if you feel strongly about it is just to give the asset to the grandchildren while you're live you ask a question that must be of interest to many of us sitting here which is what happens when in capacity a lack of legal capacity rears its hair head and what is that well for one thing to do anything with wills it is necessary to have capacity to draw up a will so the first thing is if a partner as diminishing capacity then the you have to determine one if there is capacity and secondly if it's sent tends to do diminishing I think I would get a will drawn very quickly okay well what do you have to know to drop a will what what kinds of things do you have to know well you have to know the nature of a will that it is a will you have to know in a very broad terms the nature and the extent of your property you have to know sort of in broad terms the family and friends who would be your natural object of your bounty and finally you can't be under any delusion that would distort the making of the will for example many older people think their children are stealing from them this is very common and that would be a delusion that would not allow them to make the will they wouldn't have capacity if a person doesn't have capacity then the there and they don't have a will the property will go according to a government drawn will you can't make up a will if you don't have capacity the other thing is if you leave property to someone has haven't got capacity then someone has to look after it for them and in that case I would recommend that you give someone a power of attorney or set up trust that I'm going to talk about a little later to to hold the property for the incapacitated partner the other thing and I want to emphasize this to everybody is that once a person draws up a will with capacity they can never never revoke the will unless they regain capacity so for me it's almost less about capacity to drop a will and almost the fact that people sometimes get stuck with wills that they wouldn't want to have because they don't have capacity to revoke those wills does that answer some of the questions yeah yes no it wouldn't jet well I don't know I have to see the actual marriage agreement but usually a domestic agreement is something that would allow you to opt out of the provisions of the matrimonial property act and it really could only be challenged if it was unconscionable or if you didn't you know in various ways that you didn't understand what you're signing or you didn't understand you know the nature of it or that sort of thing but no once you sign you're kind of stuck okay then we look at in capacity and we have a lot of beloved partner who is incapable cannot make a will one of the alternatives to making a will is well to making a will but also to deal with yourself while you're incapacitated but you are not deceased is a power of attorney the power of attorney let someone else that someone else being the attorney operate your affairs as if they were you now when I was at the advocacy center for the elderly and I had an exit interview the person asked me well what big thing in dealing with our clients did you learn and I said I learned one thing and it's a power of attorney is a bomb it actually to mix metaphors horribly gives the keys to the vault there are ways that lawyers can lessen the impact of power of attorney there are mechanism such as having appointing menator mentors to look after powers of attorney to make powers of attorney not broad general powers of attorney which allow the attorney to do everything but only allow the attorney to do things in specific areas at specific times we as as lawyers are responsible for drawing up power of attorneys that match the particular circumstance and provide as much protection to the donor the person who gives it the power of attorney as is possible because we now live in a jurisdiction where we don't register powers of attorney basically no one monitors them it's just you know totally nothing nothing looks after them until usually it's too late so so if I had a power of attorney drawn up I wouldn't allow this precedent one that someone pulled down from a book on a shelf and said this is my power of attorney which allowed you as attorney to do everywhere everything no not that kind of power of attorney frankly has to be properly drafted it has to be normally limited and it has to have a mechanism within it to make sure that there is some monitoring going on yes because when we talked about power of attorney I thought I understood you to speak of a power of attorney with respect to financial affairs and that's what I'm talking about a power of attorney with respect to financial affairs but a power of attorney with respect to health affairs is a different sort of kettle of fish they could be in one one piece of paper one envelope but basically they're drawn up separately and a personal care directive is something that you should draw up and the first thing their personal care directive is it nominates a delegate to make your health care decisions after you lack capacity to make health care decisions so someone to do that and it goes beyond health care decisions it goes to where you live and what kind of entertainment and how you dress and who you associate so there's a person that looks after your finances a person who looks after your health care and gives consent or not for various procedures the tricky thing about a personal directive is that not only people wish to nominate someone to make their health care decisions when they can anymore but they tend to drop what we know as a living will and a living will is an indication of your attitudes and beliefs about end-of-life issues and I was kind of keen on this sort of thing and perhaps I will be brought around with different experiences until I assigned one of my classes when I was relatively young to write one of these things for an older client a theoretical client who was 59 and the young people in my room in writing a living will kind of took the point of well 59 it's so old we'll just take away our recitation all and what it made me think frankly was that one's views about death and what you want really do change over time and although you're not stuck with a health care directive in so far is people can prove that technology or views have changed then the court will change the health care directive nonetheless being somewhat unaware of various technological and and medical breakthroughs I tend to be very quiet about that my health care directive okay I was talking about the matrimonial health property act getting back if you recall what I was talking about was limitations to the ability to put in a will whatever you want and the first limitation was the matrimonial property act the second limitation is the testators family act that's the act in which the judge can remake your will and everybody's so afraid of and the third reason you can't put anything in your will you want is something called public policy and I'll talk about that in a minute and the fourth reason is the whole front area of digital assets which I'm now writing a paper on so we're going to go over through that's matrimonial assets we're going to look at testators family maintenance application that is the legislation in Nova Scotia and elsewhere which allows a will excuse me a judge to redraw your will now I hope all of you haven't gone out and made a will and left $1 to your least favorite sibling or child because that won't work but in a very famous case in the Supreme Court level the court laid out very strong a very strong path a good path as to when your will is going to be upset when am I will go to be upset well the first thing is who can upset my will well it depends in which province you reside but in Nova Scotia the people that can contest your will are basically your spouse and kids and grandchildren it's a small group of people in places like Ontario it's a much broader group of people it can be siblings and all sorts of people but we don't have that great group of people in Nova Scotia there's two bases on which you can can can contest a will the first basis is if you have a legal obligation to the person before you die and that always means the spouse now nowadays spouses are making less applications under testators family maintenance because they're getting their half under matrimonial property but still testators family maintenance the the one person is the wife the spouse legally married spouse and secondly the children but the children are minor children and adult children who have not because they're disabled been able to withdraw from the care of their parents so those people depending on the size of the estate depending upon the conduct of the various parties can depending on the contributions of the particular applicant for monies compared to the ordinary standard of living of the applicants the judges will make some determination there is however another aspect of the will redrawing areas and that is with respect to adult children who are not disabled who are not dependent and raise their hand and say mommy daddy I don't like your will I think more should have gone to me and less to my siblings and how do the courts in Nova Scotia deal with that yeah that's a good question generally speaking Nova Scotia there is no difference between adopted children legal children and illegitimate children there is no difference the court treats them all the same there isn't a distinction among children anymore but under this testator family maintenance act it's children who are not your children not stepchildren for example doesn't include stepchildren children of your body or who are adopted the one issue is adult children and that's the one everybody seems to be concerned about that you have a happy little family and you have someone that's been way away and nobody likes very much and what do you owe that person what does a person drawing up a will in Nova Scotia owe to an adult and the answer is probably not very much in the chances of an adult contesting a will in Nova Scotia and getting anything are very very little nonetheless when the court looked at obligations under will it said first you're obliged to persons who you really had a legal obligation to support that is a disabled child the spouse the minor child and to the reasonable expectations of a dependent sort of in respect or in relation to community standards so now I'm telling you you have to give money under your will to an adult child because of something called community standards well what does that mean here's an example it was a new Brunswick case originally I think new Brunswick beat British Columbia case dad was a bit of a curmudgeon he lived in BC with his wife she was a poor soul who was I think dominated by her husband they had two children one of the one of the sons was a favored son and he couldn't do anything wrong and the other son was a non-favorite son who for no reason except in his father's eyes couldn't do anything right and so in the course of eventually the father drew up a will and disinherited practically his spouse and his disfavored husband wife disfavored son and left most of the things to the favored son and the court said well look you can't disinherit your wife so she got a bunch of money and of course the favored son got a bunch of money under the will but interestingly enough the disfavored husband not husband the disfavored son got a little bit of money under this will and the court saying that you know this kind of favoritism this irrational dislike this is not in line with community standards and so we will give you some of the money in this estate but the bottom line is adult children will normally not be able to challenge their parents wills unless there's some you know mutual working together or something like that but ordinarily not so any other questions for state planning in the world, and it was worse done to have to pay it, otherwise that's the right to everything incurred on the person, and so what happens to that, can they put in something saying that the state holds money? There's two issues here. The first issue is where during the lifetime one child gets more than the other. What happens when a person dies? And the second question is who's responsible for funeral costs? It's always my view that when money is advanced to a child during lifetime, it is absolutely incumbent upon the lawyer to put this down in writing and for the nature of whatever is being given to be described, is this a gift? Is this alone? Is this alone with interests who come do it only at a certain time? Is this alone which will be forgiven at death? A lot of these problems are solved. If the nature of whatever is being advanced to a child during lifetime is documented, and documented not only with that child, but with the rest of the family, that's first thing. Now I think you're asking something else which is who is required to pay the funeral expenses and the estate in the first instance is required to pay the funeral expenses. If the state doesn't have enough money to pay the funeral expenses, then there are some municipal and social welfare things that can deal with that. If people make gifts, well that's up to them. I've kind of got off my discussion. I was saying that there are things that keep you from dealing as easily as you would with all your state under will, the matrimonial property, the testator family maintenance, public policy. You can't leave under will things to people you would like to. And you know it's my home province of New Brunswick. We solved this and I think very wisely and courageously took a stand when a fellow in New Brunswick laid $250,000 on a white supremacist organization in the United States. And the New Brunswick court in the last year said no, you can't do this. This is against public policy to give money to an organization who espouses racial inequality and discrimination and violence. The courts have now taken this with some caution because this is new. We always talked about testamentary freedom. If you could give money to white supremacist organization when you're alive, the question goes, why can't you give it when you're dead? Well, you can fight that out of my classes or whatever. This isn't settled yet. So some other examples, example of a black daughter who was a disinherited because she gave birth to a son with a white man. And this one that's coming up through Ontario, which is very interesting one, a person, a son being disinherited by his father because of his sexual preference. So this idea that you can kind of at least in intimate family situations in the small wills that we have, that we deal with our economic and personal relations in our family, wouldn't be subject to these broader policy considerations. That seems to be now at least a debatable point. And finally, digital assets. In the last couple of years, more and more of us have been acquiring digital assets, even me. My husband, my son acquired thousands of dollars as assets on the war of, what is it? War of Warcraft? What is it? World of Warcraft, that's it. I don't get those words down easily because I wasn't too happy about it. But anyway, he quit this World of Warcraft leaving a whole bunch of money in it because he thought it was either that or university and I think he chose wisely. There's those of us who might have participated in Ashley Madison, who was unfortunately hacked. And there's all this drop box, which I find really wonderful for photographs, there's dating sites, there's all sorts of things out there. In fact, some sites are of significant commercial value to people. And they have professional and commercial value in the goodwill and in the context that they have created. So who owns this kind of, well, we say it's property, but it is. Is it property? Well, it's something. If I look at my Facebook, my husband, my son was looking at some of these terms of service the other day because I knew I was making this lecture. So he's reading them and the things before you click on I accept, they go on and on and on and tiny and tiny and tiny scripts. And my son, who will remain nameless and has a different name from mine, thank God. I don't think he's done everything illegal in his life and he said, my God, doing it illegal so hard just pushes it back into the illegal world. So if you read all those little words and long paragraphs under the terms of service, you'll understand the nature of the new property which is digital property and it's different from property as we're used to. For one thing, under the terms of service, theoretically in many accounts our digital assets cease to exist are eliminated once we are. It's a kind of different kind of property. It would be amazing if my house on McDonald's Street once I died was eliminated. Bang! The plows came in. But that's what happens to a lot of our digital assets. The terms of service say that if you die, tough, it's over. In Facebook, they say that if you die, you have a choice. You can tell us before. They can tell us before. You want your whole Facebook pages just eliminated, deleted, fair enough. Or you can allow the Facebook pages to be memorialized and frozen essentially and then get a digital legacy administrator to allow some fooling around with those pages. In many, many cases you stand to lose the content and often the value of those pages. There's nothing you can do because the operative law is not any law that we have but simply the terms of service of the provider whether it be Ashley Madison Facebook or World of Warcraft. So what do you do now when you die with your digital assets? Many of us have many different digital assets. Well, don't tell anyone but you have to give your password to somebody else because most of the services will not give your password to your grieving child or wife. Tough they will say. So you've got to give your password to them during lifetime or at least arrange for them to be able to get them after you die. And I know there are a lot of commercial vaults, digital vaults that hold passwords that you can use too. Now if you do that the chances are you will be breaking the terms of service of the particular provider and they will then immediately banish you from the site. It's not unnecessarily a good situation to be in. In the United States in some situations where you break the terms of services you often subject to criminal sanctions as well. What happens if you're a parent and you would love to have the drawings and the photos of your 15-year-old? A little girl that you were never a friend or anything. You let her do things on her Facebook but you really want the Facebook contents now that she's passed on. Can you get them? And the answer is no. Facebook says no. Now Facebook has been presented with a number of court cases. They were sued and they've broken down on various grounds several times. But the basic situation in Facebook is if your loved one has items on Facebook and they die and you want to get to them, you want to duplicate the contents, Facebook won't permit you to do that. We will eventually have to have some consumer legislation and some control of this wild west of law here but for now Canada is no more in a confusing situation than Europe or the United States. Maybe less so. And I'll just quickly because I know it's eight and we're going on. Who can make a will? Only we get finally after all this to a will. Who can make a will? You have to be of the age of majority unless you're married and there are special wills for service people and mariners. We talked previously about seniors and seniors can't make a will unless they have capacity and they can't revoke a will significantly unless they have capacity. There are two ways of making a will, a formal will and a holograph will. A formal will requires typing, two witnesses signed at the bottom of the holograph will. You just do it all in your writing and it's signed by you at the end. We now have a term in our wills that's called substantial compliance so that it means if you don't comply with these formalities, if the court really thinks that really was your will, they will accept it. The first clause in a will normally revokes all previous wills. I hereby revoke my all previous wills. This is the first sentence in most wills. The second clause is the one in which your executor is appointed. Your executor is a person who has a duty to get your property in, no small job maybe. In some families you have to make sure that the doors are locked and the things were tied down and that you get the property in, you pay their debts and then you transfer to the beneficiary or to the trust set up for the beneficiary. The executor doesn't need legal training. You don't need legal training to be executor. You get paid. Mostly fiduciary or trustee people don't get paid but executors get paid up to 5% of the value of the estate. There is a formula and so if you have three or four siblings and one gets to be nominated to be executor, the others are going to be quite concerned because they will not get a fairly substantial amount of money. Your executor might get a grant of probate and the executor might not get a grant of probate. A grant of probate is when the executor goes to the court and says A has died, this is his will and I'm the person appointed under the will to administer that will. So there's not in uncomplicated estates without real estate, there's very likely not to be probate. Under your will you make specific gifts to various friends and family. I had one lady long time ago who took this. We kind of tried to calm her down because she wanted to make long lists of people who were getting specific items and this was going to cost so much for her to do this. And so what she did, this was non legal. So what she did is everything in her house had a little tag as to who should get it. And so you sit there, a nice lady, you sit there and you'd have tea and you'd look under your tea cup and there would be a tag of who'd get it. That was her way of doing it, not legal. Most wills have residuary clauses after the specific gifts. You give the rest and residue of all my estate where or whoever sits you're in whatsoever kind to whomever the most important people. Just quickly now, how do you revoke a will? Well marriage revokes a will, but it doesn't revoke designations as I reminded you. And also divorce doesn't revoke a will, but it revokes gifts to the ex in the will. You can revoke a will by destroying it, not to be recommended because it's so ambiguous. And then what happens if at the end you can't find the will or there was a will and you can't find any more? There is a presumption that there was a will and there's no longer will that the will wasn't destroyed with an idea of revoking it. Even if a will's lost and you can prove it's lost, that doesn't get you very far. Because in order for a lost will to go to probate, you have to know what's in that lost will. And it's very few people who really know by heart what goes into a lost will. Talk about a few other things that I've kind of skipped over and skipped around a bit. I've talked about these things. I want to talk a little bit about guardianship because the thing that I find a lot is that when X is, for one thing you can only nominate guardians if you share or have custody of a child. And guardianship probably should go in a separate document from your will. And no matter what you say and no matter what a single parent says about the X, the chances are if there are two parents and one dies that the kids are going to go to the surviving parents. And the courts will always have the best interest of the children in mind. And a few final points here. We're not Melinda and Bill Gates, but we may want to make some charitable donations. And if we do, the thing that I find hardest is for clients to get the name correct, please, and the level that you're giving at correct too. I think that's very important with respect to who you want to give the charitable gifts to. And finally, and the one thing that I should mention because of some very unhappy things that developed over one of the Canadian soldiers a couple of years ago, is the question of who has the right to your body for burial and who decides on burial. Is it mom? Is it dad? Is it your partner? Is it a kid? None of those. They might be your executor and they might not. Your executor has the right to your body and they will decide on burial. So if you're doing something different, I think that you better talk to your families before death rather than after. I knew a person who wanted to be put up in the trees like they did in the Pala or whatever and the birds ate them. It's probably illegal in Halifax anyway but I think you should discuss that with your family before that you do that. Anyway, so that's all the main part of my presentation to you tonight. I'm quite happy to stay around and answer questions and I understand that some of you also have to probably hurry on and so we can have a little bit of a change over here. Thank you.