Wills, Trusts & Estates
-
August 09, 2024
Canada sanctions Belarusian judges complicit in Lukashenko regime’s jailing of political prisoners
Canada and its allies have imposed asset freezes and immigration bans on certain Belarusian judges and others who facilitate repression and violations of human rights in their country, including jailing hundreds of political prisoners at the behest of President Alexander Lukashenko’s illegitimate regime.
-
July 31, 2024
AMPs for securities fraud can be debts released by bankruptcy discharge: SCC
Settling conflicting appellate case law over whether the exemption in s. 178(1)(e) of the federal Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act enables administrative money penalties (AMPs) and disgorgement orders imposed by a provincial securities regulator to survive a bankruptcy discharge, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5-2 that $13.5 million in AMPs imposed by the BC Securities Commission on two undischarged bankrupts for fraudulent securities activity is a debt that can be released by a future discharge in bankruptcy. But it ruled unanimously in addition that approximately $5.6 million in related disgorgement orders would survive any discharge from bankruptcy the pair might obtain in future.
-
July 30, 2024
Counsel contend Ottawa’s spate of judicial appointments might make novel constitutional appeal moot
Lawyers who won a groundbreaking Federal Court declaration that recognized a “constitutional convention that judicial vacancies on the provincial superior courts and federal courts must be filled within a reasonable time” contend Ottawa’s appeal should be dismissed as moot if the Trudeau government gets federal judicial vacancies down to the reasonable level set by Federal Court Justice Henry Brown last February.
-
July 30, 2024
Beneficiary attempts to prove lost will based on copy
The Superior Court of Justice for Ontario was recently asked to determine whether a copy of a testamentary document is able to meet the requirements for proving a lost will.
-
July 26, 2024
SCC’s 9-0 judgment on interpreting historic treaties a big win for First Nations, their counsel say
Live up to the honour of the Crown and its “sacred” treaty promises — or the courts will step in. That might sum up the message from the Supreme Court of Canada to the defendant governments of Ontario and Canada in a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit by Anishinaabe First Nations, who ceded by treaty 174 years ago a huge swath of their traditional Northern Ontario territories only to have successive federal and provincial governments “dishonourably” flout that treaty by barely compensating the cash-strapped Indigenous communities while the Crown and big business reaped billions over the decades from the mineral, timber and other resources of the ceded lands.
-
July 25, 2024
Judicial appointment announced for Northwest Territories
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Arif Virani announced the appointment of Karin L.E. Taylor as a judge of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, according to a July 24 news release.
-
July 25, 2024
‘Hey Siri, how can I use AI in my legal practice?’
Whether we realize it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) has the ability to make our lives easier every day. The seamless integration of AI into our personal and professional lives became apparent with the rise of ChatGPT generating emails, speeches and various other documents from simple instructions and the click of a button.
-
July 24, 2024
New managing partner for Aird & Berlis
Jill P. Fraser, a senior partner in Aird & Berlis’s financial services group and a long-standing member of the executive committee, the firm’s new managing partner.
-
July 24, 2024
Collaborative law and its role in estate disputes
Collaborative law, commonly used in family law, is an innovative approach to dispute resolution — introduced to the Canadian legal landscape in 1998 — where the lawyers and parties involved in a dispute agree in advance to resolve their conflict using co-operative strategies that are out of court rather than adversarial techniques and litigation.
-
July 23, 2024
Canadian securities regulators stepped up enforcement in 2023-24, driven in part by crypto schemes
Canadian securities regulators commenced 83 enforcement proceedings between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, with 27 cases of selling securities illegally making it the most common offence, according to the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) annual year-in-review report.