Jul 18, 2025
After months of waiting, you’ve finally received your Certificate of Appointment from the Court, and you can now manage the estate, pay debts, bring in the assets, file taxes, and distribute funds.
But what do you do if you don’t know the full value of the estate and the Estate Information Return (EIR) deadline is 180 days away and fast approaching?
As an estate trustee, you have the responsibility to determine the assets of the estate and confirm the values as of the Date of Death, and it can often be a long and difficult process to obtain the information you need from a financial institution.
If you are not aware of the assets, you can consider using a service like Estatesearch or hire a lawyer to do a deep dive and uncover any accounts.
Here are a few tips and steps you should take to obtain the information you need:
1. Hire a Lawyer: In many ways it is valuable to have a lawyer assisting and advising you on the estate administration process and to reach out to the different financial institutions on your behalf. There is a cost associated with this work, so take this into consideration.
2. Prepare notarized copies of the following documents (notaries, lawyers, and paralegals can provide this service):
- Will (if obtaining prior to issuance of your Certificate of Appointment)
- Death Certificate
- Issued Certificate of Appointment
3. Provide a copy of a valid government-issued photo ID to the bank.
4. Walk into the bank branch and provide them with the notarized documents and inquire about how you can obtain statements showing balances as of the date of death. Some estate departments of banks require the branch staff to verify the physical copies of the documents and your ID in person before speaking to the Estate Trustee on the phone or via email.
5. If applicable: Call the bank and inquire about how to submit the documents needed to gain access to the statements. Some will accept clear, scanned emailed, mailed or faxed-in copies and others require you to attend in person.
6. If applicable: Mail or fax the above documents to the relevant estate department along with your request for the balance of the account and statements as of the date of death.
7. Follow-up and keep good records. On that first conversation with the bank, ask for a reference number, and phone number or email address so that you can follow up on the status of your request. Once you receive the requested information, save it and make note of the documents and values received for when you need to report to the court and on your Estate Information Return.
Olesya Johnson
Nothing contained in this post constitutes legal advice or establishes a solicitor-client relationship. If you have any questions regarding your legal rights or legal obligations, you should consult a lawyer.
Aug 25, 2023
When your spouse passes away, you often have way too much on your plate to worry about money. However, once the time comes to deal with your finances, it is important to know what options you have available under current Ontario legislation.
If your spouse had a valid Will when they passed away, you can easily collect your entitlement. However, if for some reason this is not what you were hoping for, rather than challenging the Will or going through the trouble of a dependant support claim, you can choose to use the Family Law Act (FLA) to your benefit.
Under s.6 of the FLA, surviving spouses have the right to choose between their entitlements under the Will, or claiming an ‘equalization payment’ as if they were getting a divorce. This is called spousal election.
Now, determining the value of an equalization payment can be a little tricky, especially once tax implications become involved. Generally speaking, this payment will be comprised of the difference between each spouse’s net family property (NFP). If the deceased spouse has a higher NFP, the surviving one is entitled to that difference.
Therefore, it is in the surviving spouse’s best interest to minimize the value of their NFP as much as possible.
Deducting Disposition Costs in NFP Calculations
If there is a large asset that will be expensive to liquidate, a common issue is how to add this to the NFP. Can this asset’s value be reduced by listing the ‘capital gains’ as a liability, even if the asset is not disposed of just yet?
This was one of the issues in a 1994 Ontario Court of Appeal case called Sengmueller v. Sengmueller. Here, it was noted that tax consequences are appropriate to take into account when determining net family property amounts.
However, strict rules apply:
- “There must be satisfactory evidence of a likely disposition date of the assets.”
- “The costs of disposition will be inevitable when the owner disposes of the assets or is deemed to have disposed of them regardless of whether the asset needs to be realized to make an equalization payment.”
So, for example, if a surviving spouse is about to sell her home, ‘capital gains’ can be listed as a liability as of valuation date, regardless of whether she needs to sell the home or not. As long as there is enough evidence that the sale of the home is likely, the costs of this sale can be used to reduce her NFP.
This was more recently affirmed in Tremblay v Tremblay, where the court acknowledged that ‘disposition costs should be deducted in determining the value of an asset for equalization purposes unless it is unclear when, if ever, the value of the property will be realized.’ It was determined that ‘the value of the asset for equalization purposes is the net value after tax and other disposition costs’.
So, make sure to keep this in mind when deciding between spousal election or collecting your entitlement under the Will – sometimes tax law makes all the difference!
Colleen Dowling
Nothing contained in this post constitutes legal advice or establishes a solicitor-client relationship. If you have any questions regarding your legal rights or legal obligations, you should consult a lawyer.
Jun 8, 2023
As an Executor, it is your responsibility to determine the value of the Deceased’s assets as of his or her date of death. Depending on the relationship between the Deceased and the Executor, this step can be easy or a little complicated. If you are not familiar with the Deceased’s assets, below are some ways an Executor would be able to determine the assets of the estate.
- Review the Will, if there is one: If the Deceased left a Will there may be mentions of assets that they own such as real estate, bank and investment accounts, valuable household items, jewellery etc. This would prompt the Executor to go searching for those assets.
- Search the Deceased’s personal belongings: If you have access to the Deceased’s residence, completing a thorough search of the Deceased’s personal belongings can also provide the Executor with an idea of what the Deceased owned as of his or her date of death. For example, locating financial statements, tax returns, mail, emails, and loyalty cards.
- Contacting Financial Institutions: Another way to search for information concerning the Deceased’s assets is to contact banks, investment companies and credit unions to request information on all accounts they are holding in the name of the Deceased. This also gives the Executor an opportunity to identify the liabilities of the Estate as the banks would normally also provide information regarding any mortgages or lines of credit the Deceased may have had at the time of his or her passing.
Overall, investigating estate assets can be very frustrating and time consuming. But with a lot of patience and good record keeping, the Executor can locate these assets and prepare a work plan to properly administer the estate.
Felicia Cyril
Nothing contained in this post constitutes legal advice or establishes a solicitor-client relationship. If you have any questions regarding your legal rights or legal obligations, you should consult a lawyer.
