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Are you planning to purchase a home? Is so, you should know that meeting with a real estate lawyer will ensure that your home purchase is legal, binding and in your best interest. But to accomplish this, they’ll need you to provide them with certain key information and documents. Since real estate deals are time-sensitive, it’s important to be prepared. Here are four types of things your real estate lawyer will need from you.

Probating is the legal process of validating a will and giving an executor the authority to act on the deceased’s behalf. This process is required in most circumstances, and you should consult a probate lawyer even if the will is not complicated. While in some circumstances a will may not need to be probated; only a lawyer can tell you for certain.

For their protection, banks, trust companies and other financial institutions need proof that an individual is the executor of an estate before turning over funds to them. If there’s no will, assets are divided in accordance with Alberta estate law, and family members can apply to be administrators of the estate.

Appointing someone under an enduring power of attorney means authorizing a person (usually a family member or friend) to make financial decisions and transactions on your behalf if you become mentally incapacitated. It is a wise precaution and one everyone, especially seniors, should seriously consider. 

If you have elderly parents and they haven’t yet begun to think about appointing an enduring power of attorney, you should begin discussing the subject with them. Here’s what you need to know.

Are you putting your house on the market? Then ensuring that your Real Property Report (RPR) shows the current improvements should be at the top of your to-do list. When an RPR isn’t up to date, real estate transactions can be delayed or even jeopardized, and sellers can incur significant expenses that they were not contemplating.

A Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) is a popular and useful way to save for a child’s or grandchild’s post-secondary tuition, including government matching contributions known as the Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG). But what happens if the RESP subscriber dies. Is the RESP safe? Will the intended beneficiary receive the funds? Will the CESG portion be lost?

This blog post is intended to help executors and beneficiaries appreciate the variety and multitude of issues that can affect a probate application and administration of an estate. This potential for issues is well demonstrated in the recent Court of Queen’s Bench decision in Pullen (Re). The post will analyze three issues featured in the Pullen decision- (1) interpretation of contracts that impact the distribution of the estate, (2) executor compensation and (3) who is responsible for the legal fees of estate litigation- to emphasize the importance of consulting a wills and probate lawyer in Calgary from First West Law LLP when administering an estate.