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Celebrating

our 10th year
blog anniversary

Category: Estate Administration Tax (EAT) & Probate

Open the Pod Bay Doors: The Future of AI and Probate Applications

While modern artificial intelligence (“AI”) has already proved an immensely useful tool, with IBM’s Watson serving as an early example of a natural language processor able to receive and respond to plain language inquiries in plain language with a high degree of accuracy, it has also proven to have its

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Real Estate and Probate Planning: More Issues to Consider

Oh, did you think we were done with real estate and taxes for a while? Sorry to disappoint. Our last blog, “Selling Sunset: Real Estate Taxes Property Owners in Canada Must Know About,” discussed some new taxes and tax filings involving real estate in Ontario. Today we’d like to remind

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The Mysteries of Probate, Revealed

Of all the questions I am asked about the administration of estates, the one that comes up the most frequently is “what is probate?” If the question is asked by an executor, the next most frequent question is “how do I know if I need probate?” Often clients in their

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Alter Ego Trusts and Joint Partner Trusts: The Ideal Candidate

Alter Ego Trusts (“AETs”) and Joint Partner Trusts (“JPTs”) are effective tools to assist in probate and incapacity planning. AETs and JPTs are inter vivos trusts (meaning they are set up during a person’s lifetime), to which persons 65 years or older can transfer assets on a tax-deferred basis. An

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Death Taxes: Good or Bad and Why Do We Have Them?

In early February, I had the opportunity and pleasure of participating in a panel discussion of lawyers from several jurisdictions, including the U.S., Mexico, and Italy, at an international legal conference on the interesting topic “Inheritance Tax – Should More Countries Implement It?”. We discussed and compared how our different

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Change, It Is A-coming: Update on Estate Administration Tax

The current Ontario Government has implemented a couple of changes to the calculation of Estate Administration Tax (“EAT”, often called probate fees) and the process for EAT refunds which are due to take effect January 1st. It has promised further changes to the deadlines for filing an Estate Information Return

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Beneficial Ownership Disclosure: Only the Latest Hit

People often wish to ensure confidentiality in doing their estate planning as an important goal. A trust is a common vehicle to do so, since court probate processes, which have been around for centuries, are public and once a will is probated it becomes a public document. The current government

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