Wills, Trusts & Estates
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January 06, 2025
Government bills die on order paper as Parliament prorogues, Justin Trudeau announces departure as PM
After more than nine years as Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau announced that Parliament is prorogued until March 24, 2025, and that he will step down as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada once his successor has been chosen “through a robust nationwide competitive process.”
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January 03, 2025
Miller Thomson expands Waterloo office with two lawyers
Miller Thomson announced that lawyers David Jutzi and Lee Sauer have joined the firm as associate counsel, effective Jan. 2, 2025, enhancing the firm’s Corporate M&A and Private Client Services practices in the Waterloo Region of Southern Ontario.
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January 02, 2025
Cassels welcomes 10 new partners in 2025
The following lawyers have been admitted into the Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP partnership for 2025:
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January 02, 2025
Key deadlines, tax compliance for executors and trustees
I have previously written about executors’ tax compliance responsibilities. In the past two-plus years since that article, there have been a number of changes of which executors and trustees should be aware. This article provides an overview of key tax compliance responsibilities of executors and trustees and highlights some of these recent changes.
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January 02, 2025
Ottawa to extend deadline for 2024 charitable donations to Feb. 28, 2025
Aiming to minimize the negative impact on Canadian charities of the recent postal strike, Ottawa has announced that it will introduce legislation to extend by two months the usual Dec. 31, 2024 deadline for making charitable donations eligible for a tax credit in the 2024 tax year.
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December 19, 2024
Mortgage relief measures saved Canadians $4 million in penalties, says Financial Consumer Agency
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has published a report saying that Canadians with mortgages from federally regulated financial institutions (FRFIs) have benefited from more than 8,000 mortgage relief measures in the 12 months to June of this year.
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December 17, 2024
WILLS - Testator’s intention to be given effect - Gifts - Failure of - Lapse
Appeal by Schneider from special chambers judge's interpretation of her mother’s will, Dorothy Maruzs (Dorothy) and determining that Logan Maruzs (Logan) and Ericka Anderson (Ericka), children of Schneider’s deceased brother Vincent Maruzs (Vincent), would inherit six quarter sections of farmland; applications to admit new evidence.
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December 17, 2024
Vavilov at five | Sara Blake
Five years ago, on Dec. 19, 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada, in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, re-set the standard of review for questions of statutory interpretation. In that case, and two others decided in the same week, the court demonstrated how the new standard of review is to be applied.
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December 16, 2024
Federal fiscal update after Freeland’s shock departure features tax, legal changes of note to bar
Boosting the number of judges in Ontario’s Unified Family Court and Court of Appeal, making “bail and sentencing laws stricter,” and new civil remedies — and criminal penalties of up to $1 million for corporations — under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, were among the new measures proposed in the 2024 fall fiscal update by the minority Liberal government after Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland stunned Ottawa by resigning from the Cabinet a few hours earlier.
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December 16, 2024
Two Montreal law firms join forces
Spiegel Sohmer and Ravinsky Ryan Lemoine have decided to merge and will operate under the new name of Spiegel Ryan as of Jan. 1, 2025.