Estate Planning
Make sure your wishes don't need a courtroom to be understood.
Estate planning is how the people you love find clear instructions instead of guesswork — a will, the right beneficiary designations, and a plan for who makes decisions if you can't.
What's Included
What working together looks like.
- A review of whether your will — or the lack of one — reflects your current wishes
- Beneficiary designation review on insurance, RRSPs, TFSAs and pensions
- Guidance on powers of attorney for property and for personal care
- Guardianship planning for minor children
- Strategies to help reduce probate and estate settlement costs where appropriate
- Coordination with a lawyer for the legal documents themselves
Who This Is For
You might recognize yourself here.
New parents
Naming a guardian for a child for the first time.
Blended families
Making sure beneficiary designations actually match current wishes, not an old assumption.
Anyone past a major life change
A divorce, a remarriage, or a will that hasn't been looked at in a decade.
How It Fits Together
This rarely stands alone.
Decisions here tend to touch other parts of your plan. A couple of related places to look next:
Insurance Planning
A policy's beneficiary designation is one of the simplest, most overlooked parts of an estate plan.
See insurance planningRetirement Planning
Unspent retirement savings become part of your estate — the two plans are best built together.
See retirement planning
Common Questions
Answered plainly.
No — a lawyer drafts and executes the legal will and powers of attorney. What happens here is the financial side: making sure your beneficiary designations, insurance and account structures actually match what your will says, and coordinating with your lawyer so nothing contradicts.
Your estate is distributed according to your province's default rules, which may not reflect your actual wishes — and the process is often slower and more expensive than it would be with a will in place.
Yes, significantly — these typically pass directly to the named beneficiary outside of your will entirely. If they're out of date or inconsistent with your will, that inconsistency is exactly what causes disputes.
A will takes effect after death. A power of attorney takes effect while you're alive but unable to make decisions yourself — for finances, for healthcare, or both, depending on the document.