Articles

The April Brown Bag Lunch was held on April 16th and, as usual, members of the OBA Trusts and Estates Section gathered to discuss various issues that have come up in their practices recently (such as moral claims under section 5 of the Escheats Act, 2015 and timing for resignation and passing of accounts). The next Brown Bag Lunches will be held on May 21 and June 18, 2024. These will be the final two meetings for the 2023-2024 OBA term. Meetings will then resume in September.

A number of interesting discussions were had at the March 2024 Brown Bag Lunch. One topic of discussion was about the situation where there was no affidavit of execution and a deceased witness. Another discussion was about the situation where a witness to a codicil was a beneficiary of the Will, but not as a result of the codicil. If you would like to join the meetings please contact the moderator, Rebecca Kennedy, for Zoom details.

On February 20, 2024, OBA members met for the monthly Brown Bag Lunch. Attendees discussed the use of trusts for registered plans, issues relating to limited Wills, multiple Wills in separate jurisdictions, and the administration of a person’s estate where there are assets in multiple jurisdictions, and more.

After experiencing a cyber attack, organizations tend to keep a tight grip on incident-related information, often by asserting some sort of legal privilege. In LifeLabs LP v. Information and Privacy Commr. (Ontario), a panel of the Divisional Court of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice found that legal privileges asserted by LifeLabs did not apply to, among other things the forensic investigation report prepared by a third-party cybersecurity consultant.

The new trust reporting rules, enacted in December 2022, are now in effect, for taxation years ending after December 30, 2023. The new rules will require a greater number of trusts to file both a T3 Trust Income Tax and Information Return and a new Schedule 15. Trustees of a wide variety of trusts, including bare trusts and non-resident trusts, now have the additional onus of determining which trusts (that were previously exempt from filing a T3 Return) are captured by the new rules.

In 3295940 (2024 FCA 42; rev’g 2022 TCC 68) (“3295”), the FCA provides welcome guidance on the court’s application of the General Anti-Avoidance Rule (the “GAAR”) in section 245 of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the “Act”). 3295 is one of the few GAAR cases that has been decided in favour of the taxpayer after a long string of decisions following the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Deans Knight (2023 SCC 16).

Special rules of disposition apply for involuntary dispositions such as expropriations. These rules can lead to a deferral of the recognition of capital gains pending a final resolution of the compensation amount. The expropriated party may wish to consider the value of the potential deferral versus crystallizing capital gains in advance of the proposed increase of the capital gains inclusion rate from one-half (1/2) to two-thirds (2/3) on June 25.

For the professionalism portion of the Law Society’s recent Eight Minute Municipal Lawyer program, I was asked to reflect on managing uncertainty in the land use planning process. Here are my top five tips, most of which come from advice I have received over my longish career. I note that these are written from my perspective as a private practitioner, but I think that the majority are applicable to lawyers practicing in-house as well.

On April 10, 2024, the Provincial Government introduced Bill 185, the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, 2024. Currently in its second reading, the stated goals of the Bill include expediting housing construction by cutting red tape and streamlining approvals.