Wills & Estates

Services

How We Can Help

The lawyers at Harper Grey can help you set up wills, estates, trusts and other tools that help you preserve wealth and shift it to your beneficiaries in the way you want. At the same time, they'll advise you of the laws and systems that could have an impact.

We carefully consider your entire estate, including family businesses, large real estate holdings, income properties, trusts, charitable entities, pension funds and insurance issues to provide a comprehensive view of all your options.

Services

• Drafting wills, living powers of attorney and representation agreements
  
• Assisting clients to structure their estate plan to reduce probate taxes
• Advising clients about marriage contracts as part of their estate planning
• Arranging transfer of assets through living or inter-vivos arrangements
• Offering tax minimization strategies
• Ensuring that you have plans in place to deal with the possibility of a temporary or permanent incapacity
• Assisting individual executors with questions regarding how to administer an estate
• Working with married, common-law and same-sex couples to determine legal rights and obligations relating to insurance and pension benefits
• Recording and storing all documents in a fireproof room where they will be kept safe.

Typical situations involving wills and estates law:

A business owner wants to ensure that the wealth he has built is maximized when he leaves it to his heirs.

A community leader decides to leave a significant amount of her estate to her favourite charity so she can leave a legacy that will benefit hundreds of people, and she wants to set up a trust to manage the funds.

A parent is diagnosed with early-onset dementia. He and his children decide that a lasting power of attorney should help as his illness progresses.

Innovation

Innovation in Wills and Estates Law

• Assisting clients in second-marriage situations to set up alter ego/joint partner trusts to deal with Wills Variation Act issues
  
• Assisting clients to minimize probate fees payable to the government as estate values increase alongside skyrocketing real estate prices
• Advising our clients on the enhanced legal status of common-law partners, which can have an impact on family situations that were not previously affected
  
• Drafting representation agreements for highly acrimonious family situations
  

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