Episode 68 - How to Avoid Tax Surprises in Estate Planning with Amanda Doucette
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Nicole Garton 00:00:02 Hello and welcome to Your Estate Matters presented by Heritage Trust. Your Estate Matters is a podcast dedicated to everything estates, including building and preserving your legacy. If it's estate related, we'll be talking about it. We're having the conversations today that will help Canadians protect their families, their assets and their legacies tomorrow.
Hello and welcome to Your Estate Matters. I'm Nicole Garton. When most Canadians think about estate planning, they think about making a will, maybe a power of attorney. But what many people do not realize is that one of the biggest problems in an estate isn't legal, it's actually tax. A tax bill and death can dramatically reduce what is left for your family. It can create stress for executors. Tension between beneficiaries and in some cases even force the sale of assets people hope to keep. So today we're talking about the main things Canadians need to know about tax and how to plan ahead so their family is not left dealing with avoidable surprises. My guest is Amanda Doucette, a partner at Stephenson Hood Thornton Beaubier in Saskatoon, and she's one of Canada's leading tax trust and estate lawyers.
Nicole Garton 00:01:18 She has a masters of Law in Taxation from Osgoode Hall, has taught wills and estates at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, and she's the host of the Tax Chick Podcast, where she makes Canadian tax more accessible and easier to understand. Amanda, welcome. We're so glad you're here. Amanda, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.
Amanda Doucette 00:01:42 Thank you so much for having me.
Nicole Garton 00:01:44 So it's amazing to have an illustrious practitioner on our pod and an experienced podcaster herself. Do you want to jump in and tell us actually about your podcast? Well, I.
Amanda Doucette 00:01:55 Host the Tax Check podcast. I started it in 2020 because I found when Covid was happening, there were so many business owners who needed information on the tax changes and they had no safe space for where they could get it. And so I started podcasting about that, and it kind of branched out into other tax and estate planning topics. And we're in season seven now. So it's been going for a while.
Nicole Garton 00:02:17 And it's you're very funny.
Nicole Garton 00:02:19 And you managed to make tax entertaining. I don't know how you do that, but.
Amanda Doucette 00:02:23 Well, I think tax is fun and I really want to encourage other people to think tax is fun too. So I'm glad that that's how you feel when you listen to it.
Nicole Garton 00:02:31 And Amanda and I are colleagues in this area, and I see her from afar every year at our annual big conference, the Society of Trust in the State Practitioners National Conference. And not to put you on the spot, Amanda, but you won a big award at the conference just last week. Do you want to tell us tell our listeners what you want?
Amanda Doucette 00:02:52 I won the Michael Karofsky Volunteer of the Year award at the National conference, which was a huge shock and surprise and honor. I know like you, we both really love this organization and what it does for the practitioners in it, as well as for the public, and I'm really passionate about it. So it doesn't feel like work. When I'm doing volunteer work with this organization.
Amanda Doucette 00:03:13 It feels like an extension of my practice. And so it was just such a surprise and an honor to be recognized for it.
Nicole Garton 00:03:20 So you're an incredible volunteer, but also an incredible thought leader. So let's jump into it so our listeners can get the benefit of all your expertise. But do you want to first share what drew you to this niche, like the intersection of tax and estates?
Amanda Doucette 00:03:35 Well, I mean, early in my career, I was really a more typical tax lawyer. So my background is not in tax. I have an undergrad in psychology. I intended to be a family law lawyer. I kind of fell into tax and the first couple of months of my practice, and I started out doing tax litigation. And in our firm at the time, if you wanted to do tax litigation, you needed to take the in-depth tax course with Cica Canada at the time now CPA Canada. And so I went and took the three year tax course and was doing a lot of corporate reorganization work, a lot of corporate restructuring work.
Amanda Doucette 00:04:10 I mean, the large bulk of our client base at the time and still is at our firm, is small private business owners in our province. And so that was the work I was doing. And as time progressed, I found I was really drawn into the estate planning world. I find people's stories really fascinating, and I find that estate planning and then also a state administration is the time when people feel the most anxious, the most stressed, and the most, I guess, like not really guilt, but like unconfined s about their circumstances. And so to be able to help walk someone through that and to teach them some of the foundations of tax principles and how tax interacts with that is just such a joy and such a wonderful thing to be able to do. And once I got involved with step, the organization we were talking about in 2018, it really catapulted my interest in the area. And so now my practice is primarily that along with tax litigation, and I don't do as much corporate reorganization work anymore because it didn't feed my joy in the same way that this other work does.
Nicole Garton 00:05:15 So many people find tax scary. It's complicated. They find it stressful. and they also think it's only meant for people that are wealthy. What are your thoughts on that?
Amanda Doucette 00:05:28 I think that there's certain things that we can learn about that fall into that category of things that are scary and usually involve money in finances. I think that's a pretty common problem that we run into. And I don't know if it's because we're told this when we're younger. I mean, I was always told the story, you're bad at math. And so math was always something I struggled at. I was always good at reading. But, I mean, I still got good marks in math, but it was harder for me. So therefore it felt like certain professions were closed off to me, and it felt like certain areas were closed off from my knowledge. I don't think I'm alone in that. I think a lot of people feel that way, and I truly believe that it's all about how you approach it. Anyone can learn anything if you approach it with the right attitude.
Amanda Doucette 00:06:09 And when it comes to something like taxes and finances, whether you're a business owner or you're just an individual taxpayer, you should know. You should know the basis of the tax system. You should understand where your money is going. That knowledge will give you a sense of comfort and a sense of power and a sense of control. And I especially say this to business owners, you know, why are you just turning over the money to somebody else to make those decisions for you? You're the one who earned it. You're the one who has the expertise that created this amazing business and has made this money. Don't you want to make the decisions with that money, too, and make those with a knowledge base that you understand what's going on? So I think it is an attitude adjustment and like a reframing to sort of say, no, I can do this, but you need to find the right way to approach it.
Nicole Garton 00:06:53 So what is the right way? You're a business owner or just a working Canadian, or you're getting closer to retirement, you want to start thinking about tax, but how do people start?
Amanda Doucette 00:07:04 Well, I think you learn about tax the same way you kind of learn about anything, right? If you want to paint your spare room and you don't know what tools you need or you don't know, you know what? How to pick a color.
Amanda Doucette 00:07:15 You're probably going to talk to some friends, find out, you know, if they're using someone what they've purchased previously, you might watch some YouTube videos. You might listen to some podcasts. I think tax is very similar. There's a number of podcasts and, and sort of good sources of information out there about both estate planning and taxes by professionals who know what they're doing. And sometimes it's great to just start by immersing yourself in the information. It helps to desensitize you to what information is out there, and you start to hear things over and over again. It makes you feel a little better. The next thing you need to do is surround yourself with a good group of advisors, and I have so many people I run into who say, oh, I really don't like my lawyer, or I really don't like my accountant. And I'm like, well, then why are you with them? Like, if it's a personality thing, like, I'm not everyone's cup of tea, I want you to go find someone that works for you that you know you can ask questions to.
Amanda Doucette 00:08:08 I mean, to this day, when I work with my financial advisor, we sit down and I ask all kinds of questions about what about this and what about that? And can you explain this again to me? You should feel comfortable having those conversations with your advisor. And if you don't, I think you need to look at who you're surrounding yourself with.
Nicole Garton 00:08:24 How do you find a good advisor? You're a business owner or retired person. How do you know who's going to be good and be a good fit?
Amanda Doucette 00:08:34 Well, I think there's sort of two pieces of what makes someone a good fit. I think one is they need to be actually educated and have credentials. Right. But then you can have two people that have the exact same credentials and the same smartness, but you click with one and you don't click with the other. So the second piece is the personality. And so when people are hiring a new advisor, I always say, phone a couple people, have a conversation with them.
Amanda Doucette 00:08:55 Like, if you don't even want to have the conversation with them, you probably don't want them as your advisor. Like, let's start there. and within each advisory group, there's certain requirements for credentials that, you know, you can look up to find out. whether or not they've met those criteria. I think if you're looking for an estate and trust advisor and you have any, any type of complexity in your estate, which can be as simple as you have a private company, you have a child with long term dependencies, you have a blended family, you have assets out of country. Any of those things, to me, create the start of a more complex estate. You need to look for an advisor that has a TEP at the end of their name. This is the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners that we're talking about, because that is not an organization that you can pay to play in. You actually need to earn your credentials, and you need to continue to earn them, to keep them.
Amanda Doucette 00:09:50 And so you at least know that those people have access to others. So if they can't help you, they can find someone to help you, but they have the training to properly handle the issues that you're dealing with.
Nicole Garton 00:10:02 And if you are looking for somebody with that designation and trusted estate practitioner, if you go on the internet, they've got a practitioner directory and you can actually, you know, go by province city area of practice. And so that's a great way to find potential people. Let's talk about different levels. So there's people that might have a more straightforward situation. You mentioned people that might need some more sophisticated planning maybe. Let's unpack that. So there's a you know, everybody should, as we know, should have a basic, well, some sort of enduring power of attorney and a health care agreement. It's going to be called different things in different provinces. But what's the checklist of criteria where people, if they should get somebody a little bit more experienced or they want some sophisticated advice, how do people know they fall in that category?
Amanda Doucette 00:11:02 Well, I think what's important to remember is if you're making a will in Canada, depending on which province you're in, each province has its own legislation that governs what is a formal will and what actually qualifies as a will in the province.
Amanda Doucette 00:11:13 And so you have to be very careful, because if you're doing the do it yourself plan, which a lot of people do, you may inadvertently create something that's not valid in your province. So I think your first step is to make sure you've created something valid. And if you're doing the fill in the blanks wills or something like that, they're typically not valid. Some provinces have an ability and Saskatchewan is one of those to do a holographic will, which is all in your own handwriting, signed and dated by you. Not every province has that, so that's not going to work the back of the napkin on every single province. Most provinces have a public legal education association, which is an independent arm of the government. Usually it's a non-profit. It's funded through foundations. And most of those organizations across the country have information pamphlets available on the web that talk about the requirements in your province. So it's a great safe space to find out the legal requirements in your province. So I think as a starting point, if you're going to do it yourself, because, you know, I always hear from clients, my stuff's not complicated.
Amanda Doucette 00:12:15 Usually when someone says that they have a complexity that they haven't recognized. But if you feel like you don't need professional advice, just make sure you're actually doing it in accordance with the formalities of your province. Otherwise, you've undone it. But I think that, you know, when you're hiring someone to do estate planning, a state planning is not just making your will, not just making your power of attorney like you've identified. It's so much more than that. And it's about taking a look holistically at your assets and your debts. Have you named beneficiaries on things? What is your tax exposure on death? What is the probate fee exposure on death. What logistically is going to happen. So especially between spouses. We sometimes forget to think about, “okay, if the first spouse dies, what cash flow does the remaining spouse have access to and how quickly do they get access to it?” So it's about getting advice and understanding all of those things. And even once you do all of those things, you should be dusting it off every couple of years just to make sure that nothing has changed.
Amanda Doucette 00:13:13 Because our lives do change and we forget about those documents and think, “oh, we did a will, we're good to go.” Well, maybe you're not. And maybe now you've done something with your investments or done something with your insurance policy that now has changed what you intended in your will. So you do want to keep them as live documents. I think that if you have any of the factors that I've identified, stuff out of state or out of country or people out of the country, like if your kids are living abroad or something like that, or if you have property in the US, if you have long term dependencies. So a child that's going to be dependent on you into adulthood, a spouse that maybe has a long term dependency issue. If you're in a blended family where there's maybe children from a second marriage as opposed to children from a first marriage. If you have private corporations, you own your own business and you're looking to do succession of that business. All of those things are what I would call complexities, that it's worth seeking some legal advice on, to find out what you need to do, what obstacles you need to be aware of, and just get that base of knowledge.
Nicole Garton 00:14:18 And also First Nations.
Amanda Doucette 00:14:20 Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And if you are dealing with property on a reserve or going to be putting in place a First Nations trust, it is so crucial that you hire an advisor who has specialized expertise in that area. It is a very specialized area of law. And again, you want to make sure you're meeting the proper formalities and getting proper advice.
Nicole Garton 00:14:41 Yeah. Because there's completely different legislation like the Indian Act will often govern an estate. And if there's property on reserve, there's often very circumscribed rules about who can receive that property.
Amanda Doucette 00:14:53 Correct. Yes.
Nicole Garton 00:14:54 Let's talk about many families. So maybe someone's got a paid off home, a cottage, a large riff. They've got a will. They think they're straightforward. Do you want to talk about some tax issues that might be underlying people that otherwise think that they have a simple estate?
Amanda Doucette 00:15:12 Yeah, that's a great example. I mean, I think a lot of families, you know, they bought their house, they've got their cottage, they've got some investments, maybe they have a little small insurance policy.
Amanda Doucette 00:15:21 It's the first marriage all their kids are, you know, biological children of theirs. So we have no real complexities in the standard sense as people think, oh, I'm good to go. I don't need to worry about anything. So if a family like that comes in and sees me, for example, there's a couple of things we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about what I call the little tax versus the big tax. So the little tax is like the probate fees in your particular province. The big tax is the income tax. And that's the one. Nobody ever kind of talks about it. And so you want to think about how all of these various properties are owned. So I am assuming if it's a husband and wife coming in to see me, they probably jointly own the house that they're living in. And we know that in Canada, when you jointly own a house and it's joint with the right of survivorship on the death of the first person, it automatically passes to the survivor.
Amanda Doucette 00:16:12 So that particular asset actually falls outside of the estate. It does not need to be probated. So we think great. But what we are forgetting is that there's an income tax consequence associated with that house. We know that in Canada we have something called the principal residence exemption that we're allowed to claim on the residence we primarily live in. These people have a cottage and a house. I'm guessing they primarily live in their house, and they pop down to the cottage in the summer for a little bit, so they're probably going to want to claim it on their house in 2016. The rules changed on principal residence, and so now they require you. They, being the government, require you to file a form when you dispose of your principal residence to say, hey, I'm claiming this is my principal residence. So any gain on this sale, I'm not paying tax on it. I've staked my claim. And that includes when you die. And this is something that a lot of people forget about. So if you die and you jointly own property with a right of survivorship, you still have to file that form in accordance with your death, and you still have to report that you disposed of half of the interest in the property.
Amanda Doucette 00:17:17 And that's important. And if you fail to file the form, there's a penalty. And you also don't get that step up in the cost base of the property. So the house in and of itself, from an estate perspective, it falls outside of the estate. Pretty simple to have it transferred to the surviving spouse, but there's still a bit of a tax consequence and that you have to do that filing and report that disposition. Then if we look at something like the cottage. So the cottage is probably also jointly owned with the right of survivorship. Although in many families, the cottage is second generation. So the cottage actually has a husband on it and his brother and his sister and they own it as tenants in common. Right? That starts to get exciting because now when the husband dies, there is no automatic rollover of his interest. His interest probably goes to his wife in his will, but that's going to go through probate. And so we have to wait to do the transfer. You pay probate fees on it and again, you report that disposition on the terminal tax return.
Amanda Doucette 00:18:18 there are exceptions to that. And I think we'll talk a little later about the deemed disposition on death and where the tax comes in. But we have to always think about what reporting is required. when we think of things like RIFFs or RRSPs, like any sort of registered fund, it depends who's named as the beneficiary. If the spouse is named, we can defer and push the tax problem down the road. But we have lots of people who are in blended families who make this mistake where, for example, maybe they name the kids as the beneficiary of the Riff or the RRSP, and they name the new spouse as the beneficiary of the rest of their estate. Well guess what? When you die, the full value of that RRSP or Riff comes into your income and needs to be reported, and the tax gets paid by the poor person who is getting the rest of the stuff. The spouse and the kids walk away with the full value of the riff or the RRSP. So even something as simple as the estate that you've described has complexities in it, and it's not that hard.
Amanda Doucette 00:19:20 You just need to know about it. You also have to consider again what cash flow is available for their surviving spouse. Is there a need for a clearance certificate? There's lots of things to think about.
Nicole Garton 00:19:31 So you're talking about probate. So for people listening that don't know what probate is, Can you summarize that?
Amanda Doucette 00:19:37 Sure. So probate I like to call it like the gold seal of approval of the court. probate, when you receive it, it actually comes on a piece of paper. Alberta has an electronic version, but it's the same concept where there's a seal on it, and a judge has said this is the will. Yes. You are the executor. Go forth and distribute assets. And you typically have to probate in a couple of different circumstances. So one, if you have land that is owned solely in the name of one person and that person dies universally, that land's not moving unless the court approves and you get that grant of probate. The second main reason is if you have investment accounts without name beneficiaries.
Amanda Doucette 00:20:17 So some of your non-registered accounts, if you have bank accounts that are solely in someone's personal name, and usually each bank has its own threshold for when probate would be required. And then the third time when probate is a good idea is if you think there's going to be a fight about the estate, because in most provinces, the time clock for putting your hand up and saying, “hey, I don't agree with this.” This estate is usually running from the date that the grant of probate is issued. So if you never get probate, that clock really doesn't start taking. So it helps to kind of bring problems out of the woodwork. Now some provinces, for example Prince Edward Island, just require probate on every estate. So each province is different. And probate is this requirement to file a bunch of stuff with the courthouse. And it typically requires you to list assets and debts. Some provinces are more inclusive than others. For example, Saskatchewan can be a bit of a pain because we actually list all assets.
Amanda Doucette 00:21:16 So we list all the assets that have to be probated, plus all the assets that don't. Things that have name beneficiaries joint assets. And we find that if we're working with people in Alberta and we're trying to file something in Saskatchewan, they're very confused as to why we're asking for all this information, because you don't have to file that in Alberta, so probate has this requirement of filing with the court. Plus, it has a fee. And the fee is technically like a provincial form of tax. It's levied by the court. Each province has its own rates. Some provinces have a flat rate. Some provinces have no probate fees. Manitoba is $0. Probate fees. Saskatchewan is $7 on every thousand dollars of assets. We are not a high probate province. B.C. and Ontario are. And so the cost is something to keep in mind, but not so much when you're in a low probate province to try to think about that problem. It's more just what have you gathered to make it a little easier for your executors when they have to go file this stuff with the court? Do they know what your assets are? Do they know how to gather this information? That's often the pickle.
Amanda Doucette 00:22:20 And when I have clients come to me and say, oh, it's taking forever to probate, I'll usually say, okay, well, well, when did you get the information to your lawyer? Oh, well, I didn't know what I had to give. That's what holds things up. It's not the court that's holding it up. It's pretty quick. Once it gets to the court, it's the gathering of the stuff that can be a bit of a pickle, especially when the person who's died has not left a good breadcrumb trail as to what they have.
Nicole Garton 00:22:45 So there is a lot hiding in what looks like a simple estate. So, how can people be proactive so they can come see you? They can listen to podcasts, but let's talk about one of the surprises. So what is a deemed disposition and how does that happen on death? Do you want to tell people about how that works?
Amanda Doucette 00:23:07 So I mean, in Canada we don't have an inheritance tax. And I do find sometimes people are very shocked by that.
Amanda Doucette 00:23:13 It's very different from some other countries. So we're just talking about Canada here. We tax the dead person immediately before they die. And so I call it the biggest yard sale of your life. Immediately prior to your death. You're deemed to sell everything you own and reacquire it for fair market value. And I think from a visual perspective, if you think about putting all of your stuff on your front lawn and assuming it all gets sold at actual fair value, and then you've collected those funds like that's what you have to report and you're doing that with respect to capital property. Capital property is stuff that goes up and down in value. So think of houses, cabins, land shares and private corporations, investment accounts, not cash. So not your checking account, not your savings account, those sorts of things. And there are certain exceptions to this rule. One of the exceptions is you can push the tax problem which we call deferral of tax. You can push it down the line if you give something to a spouse and in certain instances to a trust for your spouse and in limited circumstances.
Amanda Doucette 00:24:14 There's also exceptions for farm and fishing property. Keep in mind something may not necessarily fit in that category just because you think it fits in that category. There are very specific rules as to what qualifies. And I don't know if you went to Surf and Turf, the presentation at STEP National, but we just had a great presentation on what constitutes farming and what constitutes fishing and what the different rules are at the STEP National conference. But it's quite tricky, and a lot of people fall outside of the rules but don't realize it. But that's an exception. There's also things you can do, like utilizing your lifetime capital gains exemption, which we all have, which you can utilize for farmland, farm property, fishing property, and also for shares of private corporations that qualify under certain tests. So there's all kinds of different ways we can try to either avoid the problem or push the problem down the road, or utilize these little special tax pockets that we have available, but otherwise everything else is left behind.
Amanda Doucette 00:25:16 There's a tax to pay, and that can be a real pickle for people who haven't thought this through. I find the one that hits people. The worst is the investment accounts, like the non-registered accounts, you know, they've got these accounts. They're just trucking along. They're making all kinds of money on them. And nobody thinks that when you die, you're going to have this huge gain and there's going to be a tax to pay on it. And where do you get the money to pay the tax? There is no tree that grows in your backyard that suddenly sprouts money because you've died. So sometimes you have to start selling off assets in order to pay the tax, which then triggers a further tax problem and it can be a bit of a pickle. It also takes time to sell assets, but the taxes are due. So now you have interest accruing on that. And so it is important to start thinking through, okay, if I was to die, do I have a tax problem or is it only on my spouse's death, like the both of us did I, that we have a tax problem when we know we have the tax problem? Where is the money coming from to pay the tax problem? We often think about where money comes from to pay debts or where money comes from to pay mortgages.
Amanda Doucette 00:26:21 But we don't think about it in the context of tax.
Nicole Garton 00:26:24 So at Heritage Trust, we often get appointed in messiest states where people haven't done the planning. So we have multiple estates where we owe seven figures to the CRA, and we have to sell capital property to try to pay that. But the real estate market in BC is very slow. And, you know, the interest that accrues on, on those tax bills is, is hefty. So, the idea, and I think we're both going to agree, I think a really important take home message to people is proactive planning in advance. That's going to save a world of expense delay and problems later. But people listening to us are the planners. So you talked about unregistered funds, but also let's talk about riffs. So RSP is like what's particular about those.
Amanda Doucette 00:27:15 Well, I think we had mentioned earlier about that mismatching of the tax. Right. So, we have a lot of clients who are naming beneficiaries on their roofs or their RRSP.
Amanda Doucette 00:27:24 If you're naming your spouse, I'm not concerned because we can defer that tax problem until the spouse's death. Although, that being said, we do have to remember that it's not an automatic rule to the spouse. There's paperwork that needs to be filled out, and it needs to be filled out within a certain time frame. And if not, you lost the rollover. And we had a number of instances during Covid where, you know, we had spouses that were maybe elderly and one spouse dies and the other one's in hospital and the documents weren't signed in time, we lost the rollover. So just because you've named your spouse, that doesn't automatically give you that out.
Nicole Garton 00:27:56 And what is it again? It's it's 36 months. Correct.
Amanda Doucette 00:27:59 36 months.
Nicole Garton 00:28:00 Yeah. Correct.
Amanda Doucette 00:28:01 And so it doesn't automatically give you the out. You still need to file stuff and do stuff. But presuming you've done then filed what you need to, we can avoid the tax problem there. But when we name anybody else, you know, if we name the estate, if we name adult kids, if we name godchildren, I'm not sure who it is, but whoever it is, if we name someone else, we have a mismatch between the asset and the tax, because what will happen is the full value of that asset falls into the estate and is taxed in the estate of the deceased, and then the full value of the asset that was cashed out by the financial institution is given to the beneficiary.
Amanda Doucette 00:28:36 So if you have different beneficiaries receiving the asset, then those left to receive the residue of the estate, you have someone that's paying a tax bill for someone else's assets. So you have a mismatch. And so I always think when you're doing beneficiary designations, you should start from the place of, “I am going to name the estate that makes the most sense.” We have cash then falling into the estate. You have cash matching the tax bill and everything matches. If you're moving off of the estate, there needs to be a reason for it. So for example, naming a spouse makes sense, especially on the first to die. If everything is going to the spouse, why not name the spouse? Great. We defer the tax problem. We're not worried about that mismatch. Wonderful. But if you're making the choice to name children. When I say children, I'm. I'm meaning adult children. In this case, there's sometimes complexities with naming minors in these situations. you need to recognize there's a mismatch. So if those children are also your residuary beneficiaries, no problem.
Amanda Doucette 00:29:40 It's all going to come out in the wash. But if they're not, if there's different people receiving the residue of your estate, you've just taken a big scoop out of their ice cream pail and put it in the kids ice cream pail, and that can be a huge issue.
Nicole Garton 00:29:53 And another error is people forget to update their beneficiary designation. So I see things where, you know, someone started a job 20 years ago, they put their sibling down. They subsequently, you know, got married, had kids. You know, they have employer matches, and the person passes away. And the the registered funds are going to a completely different place than what they thought or they don't update it after divorces. A very messy situation. So what would you say to people to avoid those kinds of errors?
Amanda Doucette 00:30:26 Well, I think people operate on assumptions a lot. I'm sure you see this a lot in your practice as well. I'll have someone come in and they're emphatic to me, this is what I own.
Amanda Doucette 00:30:35 This is how I own it. This is who I've named. And I go, great. Let's double check. Let's just make sure we're all on the same page. And it's never what they think. And it's because somebody hasn't followed through in the past, right? They might have instructed someone to change something and didn't get done or someone forgot to take a box. It happens. It's human error. And so I think when you're doing that, that review, so your initial estate planning actually go check the titles to your properties especially, like I mean, your principal residence. I'm guessing if you're married it's probably jointly in your names and we're not too concerned about it. But double check the title and make sure there isn't an old mortgage sitting on it. So I had a client a couple of years ago that we were doing her estate planning. Her husband had passed away. We were looking at her, her title for her property and yes, it was just in her name. Great. But there was a mortgage sitting on it.
Amanda Doucette 00:31:23 She goes, I paid that mortgage in 1990 and I said, oh, well, we're going to have to try to get that off now. Luckily, she was a wonderful keeper of paper and whipped out her letter from 1990 confirming that her mortgage had been paid. So we just called up the financial institution and got it discharged. But way easier while she was alive to do that than leaving that for her daughters to have to deal with. So that's a great example I find with a lot of families that have farmland, sometimes that farmland is not owned the way you think it is, especially if its owned between siblings. Some people think it's owned personally, but it's actually in a company. So good to get that clarification. And again, a lot of that land has been leveraged or is being used as security. And sometimes where the security has been put is not what people remember. And so knowing where that is is important too. On beneficiary designations. Sometimes, we're pretty sure we've changed everything, but we haven't.
Amanda Doucette 00:32:19 It's so easy to check that. I mean, you can get your most recent statement. You can call up your advisor or your insurance broker and they can send you something in writing. I've started asking for stuff in writing. There was a case out of Ontario. Oh, geez. It was a couple of years ago now where a lawyer got in big trouble because he basically relied on the verbal statements of his client that he had changed all his beneficiary designations. Turned out the guy had and it was still all his ex-wife. Guy dies. There was millions of dollars at issue. Lawyer gets sued for failing to double check. And to me, that's what advisors are here for. We're here to be that sort of sober second thought for you, just to make sure. And every time you dust off your documents, you want to double check them again and then sit back and think to yourself, is that still what I want? Or has something changed in my life that now I want to make that change? But if you're making changes to your designations, you have to think about what ripple effect that might have on your will.
Nicole Garton 00:33:14 So we have an estate right now where we have litigation, unfortunately, regarding life insurance and the deceased filled out paperwork, but something happened. It just didn't get filed in the right place. And so those funds unfortunately are not going where they intended and where they contractually agreed to put them. So again, delay expense. You don't want to do that. Let's talk about cottages. For many people these are often highly emotional assets that have been in families for many years. What are some best practices for family cottages and what are the minefields people should avoid?
Amanda Doucette 00:33:53 I feel like we could have a whole episode on the family cottage, man. It's like the fence disputes, like those are the litigation disputes that we see. So I think, you know, the family cottage is tough because it often has this, personal sentimental value. So even if the cottage is run down and not really valued at much, the sentimental value is what causes the problem. And so typically what happens is mom and dad start.
Amanda Doucette 00:34:15 They go, they buy this cottage. Kids grow up going to the cottage, you know. Then those kids get married. Maybe one kid moves away. The other kid stays put. And so that kid and their spouse and their children are going to the cottage all the time. But first kid that's moved away still really loves that cottage. And mom and dad want to be fair. So in their will they say, we're going to leave the cottage to both kids. So then Mom and dad die. And so the mediators are gone. And now both kids are saddled with the legal obligations of this cottage. Let's hope we haven't added spouses to the title too. Let's assume it's just the adult kids. And now they each own this cottage. Well, how do they own it? Do they own it joint with the right of survivorship? If so, we're playing Russian roulette over which kid dies first, and then the other one gets the jackpot right of the whole property. If they own it as tenants in common, and each of those kids decide to leave it down to their kids, you could end up with a whole bunch of people on title, and you could end up with one kid being on title with their nieces and nephews, right? If somebody was to pass away.
Amanda Doucette 00:35:15 How are we paying for repairs? How are we deciding when that property is going to be sold or when it's going to be renovated? How do we decide who gets to use the property at what time each year? I mean, who goes and opens up the cabin each year and gets the water going, gets the sewage tank going? Who closes it up? Who keeps the dock repaired? There are so many problems that happen with cabins. And so what I often tell parents is just sell it. Sell it before you die. Let the kids split the funds. They can go buy their own cabins on their own. But most parents don't want to do that. Most parents don't want to leave it down. So I suggest we need to have a family discussion. We need to sit everybody down. Let's find out. First of all, do all the kids actually want the cabin? Because sometimes parents assume things. That is not correct. If we've got different buckets of assets and you have three kids and one kid doesn't want the cabin, no problem.
Amanda Doucette 00:36:08 You give the kid part of a different bucket of assets and then you leave the cabin to the other two. Then I think there's some value in putting in place some form of cabin agreement. So, you know, there's a co-ownership agreement. This is how we're going to govern ourselves. This is how we're going to determine how things are going to be paid. We have some clients that want to put the cabin into trust that has its own pickles associated with it. Because are we also funding the trust with additional monies to help pay for repairs, etc.? There's now different tax filing obligations. So it's its own pickle. But I think that the problem with cabins is not even so much a tax problem. It's a logistical administrative problem of what do we do when we have multiple people owning it that are not married, right, that aren't thinking necessarily in the same way about the property?
Nicole Garton 00:36:58 So I've mediated numerous cabin disputes over the years when I was still practicing, and they were colorful. And the situation is often, you know, someone's moved internationally, you know, someone has much more money than the other.
Nicole Garton 00:37:12 And so they're kind of bossing everybody around because they can pay for things. And how do we equalize time, how to equalize expenses, you know, and people have different parties and interests in their lives. So it's important to think about that in advance. Another mistake people make is they do crazy things to avoid probate. And they accidentally, I shouldn't say crazy. They do. They do things to avoid probate and they accidentally create tax or other disputes. Do you want to talk about the no nos in that respect?
Amanda Doucette 00:37:44 Sure. So I mean, in Saskatchewan we call it Tim Hortons Coffee Row. Somewhere in a Tim Hortons in Spirit Wood Saskatchewan, someone's passing out information about probate that it is really bad and you need to avoid it at all cost. And so we often find people come into us and they've already done something. What have they done? They've added the kid onto title. They've added the kid onto the bank account and they don't want to pay those probate fees, like, oh my goodness, we're not paying probate fees.
Amanda Doucette 00:38:10 And so when you take a step back and you think about that. Okay. Now we have to worry about what you've done, because you've actually triggered a bunch of stuff that you didn't intend to trigger. Probate planning differs depending on province. So I mean, you're in B.C.. Yeah. There is some validity to some probate planning in B.C. and some probate planning Ontario. But under the guidance of a legal professional, not on your own. When you go ahead and you add, for example, kids on a title to property, which is one of the more common ones that we see. You've now done a couple of things. One, you are deemed under the Income Tax Act who have disposed of your interest in that property at fair market value, regardless of whether the kid received any funds for it. And you need to report that and pay tax on that disposition in your tax return, unless the land is farmland and it can qualify under exemptions, etc.. But let's just assume we don't have any of those exceptions.
Amanda Doucette 00:39:03 You've just triggered a tax problem if you're adding them onto farmland. I hope they have GST numbers because now you have that issue associated with it. If that child gets divorced, they're now on the title to your property, and that becomes part of their family property that's subject to division. If they get sued, creditors can come after your property. Also, you can't sell your property without your kids' permission or mortgage it. And there is tons of case law where parents add the kids on in order to avoid probate. They have a falling out with the child. They want the child off the title, and the whole thing ends up in court because you can't get them off without the kids permission. Many of our provinces in Canada have a Torrens system of land registration, which is like an absolute system where the title is sort of the law. So whoever is on the title or the people that are deemed to be registered and beneficial owners, and that is the law and you can't remove them without their permission.
Amanda Doucette 00:39:56 So all of those things come into play. In addition, we've seen in the last couple of the years that the government has put in place these new rules for trust filings. And so you have to be careful that what you've done doesn't fall into the category of a bare trust that requires you to do an extra filing with the government, which is never a wonderful thing either. So all of those things have to be taken into account when we go past the land and we look at the concept of adding an adult child to a bank account. We see this a lot where a parent says, oh, it's just easier if my child has access to my bank account. He will find I get that, but what does that mean? If you have four kids and one kid is on your bank account, does that mean when you die they get the balance of that account? Or does it mean that they're just looking after it for the benefit of all the beneficiaries? Let's make sure we're very clear about what we've done.
Amanda Doucette 00:40:47 We need to make sure that if documentation is signed at the bank, it matches what's in your will. And everybody understands what the plan of attack is. So when you're trying to engage in this sort of probate planning, don't do it until you've talked to somebody because there are a lot of costs associated with it, including fees, like to do these transfers that might far outweigh any benefit that you might be receiving. And once you've done it, it's too late to go back.
Nicole Garton 00:41:15 So there's a sad case in BC where a mum, put her, you know, one son put him on title. Didn't even tell him. And he unfortunately got into some business difficulty. Ended up with an $800,000 judgment against him. Lawyers ran a land title. Well, isn't he entitled to this valuable home? Next thing you know, mum has a judgment against, registered against her home. She went to court. She was unsuccessful in removing that judgment. So that's a very word to the wise. so you mentioned something about trust reporting.
Nicole Garton 00:41:54 And, you know, things are wildly changing year by year. This year, it seems to, you know, whoever the policy, people are changing their minds often at the very last minute. Do you want to talk about what some of those considerations are like? And are you advising trusts to clients as much because I know a lot of practitioners, given the increasing complexity, the tax issues, we're seeing less trust planning. What do you see in your practice?
Amanda Doucette 00:42:25 Well, I think it depends on what type of trust. Right. So when we take a step back, a trust in Canada is a legal concept. It's governed by legislation in each province. And it's this idea that someone puts something into a bucket. It's looked after by another person called a trustee for the benefit of people called beneficiaries. That's the idea. And a trust up until the last couple of years, whether it was created on death or in lifetime, was a really popular estate planning tool until around 2017.
Amanda Doucette 00:42:54 And it's gotten much worse in the last few years because it had a lot of great tax benefits, and it also did not require much in the way of tax filings. So there's different categories of trust. There's what we call inter vivos trusts, which are trusts created during lifetime. And then there's testamentary trusts, which are trusts that are created on death. So I think it's easier to start with these testamentary trusts first because we're talking about an estate planning matter here. So what we used to see before the rule changes is we would see somebody had a will and there would be like ten trusts in there. Everybody was getting a trust. It was like Oprah. When she's giving everyone a car, it's like you get a trust, you get a trust. It was that idea. And why was that? Well, it was because before the big rule changes, testamentary trust had the benefit of graduated rates for tax purposes. So just like an individual, how you have stepping stone graduated rates that trusted too.
Amanda Doucette 00:43:45 So it was like being able to clone yourself and help to really do that lovely split of the actual tax burden. And so we did that all the time. Then once the rule changes came in, the government said, no, no, no, we're stopping that now. Trusts are all going to be taxed in wills at the highest marginal tax rate, unless you fall into certain categories? One of which, of course, is like a qualified disability trust. So if we're trying to provide for long term dependency, the government is still prepared to support that. But outside of that, the big tax benefit doesn't exist. Now, that being said, there's also non-tax reasons for having a trust. And we get so stuck sometimes on the tax that we forget about the non-tax. All the non-tax reasons are still there. So if you've got $1 million that you're going to be leaving to a 25 year old, is that a great plan? Probably not. Sometimes we put a trust in place to protect people from themselves.
Amanda Doucette 00:44:41 We put a trust in place with an adviser that keeps an eye on the funds. We might put in clauses or terms that require certain financial education, that require payment of portions of that trust property over time to see what they do with it. that sort of set parameters as to when funds can be given. So it can be used as a teaching tool and a way of protecting the funds. If you have large sums of money. You know, I'm talking 10 million plus that you're leaving, that you're maybe looking to do a form of legacy planning. So you want this to be for your children, their children, their children's children. And you want this to last for a long, long time, and you want to encourage philanthropy and certain activities. Well, it totally makes sense to have a trust structure at that point. It probably makes sense to have a corporate trustee of some form that's going to still be there as people die, right? That's an objective force that can be looking after the trust, because now we're not really concerned about what fees are going to be charged.
Amanda Doucette 00:45:38 We're not really concerned about the taxes. We're trying to achieve a different objective with that trust. So I think testamentary trusts still have their value. You just need to figure out your reason why you have to be very careful if you're using trusts in the farming and fishing context, for example, because there are certain rules that have to be met for the tax benefits of the transfers of those properties to be effective. And if you put stuff into trust, you can potentially not fall into those rules. So if you own farming and fishing property, you really want to consult someone when you're working on your will. Because even if you're thinking about leaving something in trust, if you're leaving it in trust past the age of 18, we have to talk about what the concept, what the context is of that, and whether or not it might not fall into the exception anymore. So let's test some entry trust. But if we think about trust in lifetime, there are two categories of trust we see often: alter ego trusts and joint partner trusts.
Amanda Doucette 00:46:35 And those are often used for the purposes of probate planning. There's very specific rules that have to be met for you to be able to use those types of trusts and very specific beneficiary lists coming out of them, and tax consequences at the end of them. But one of the big perks is that if something is in one of those trusts, you therefore don't own it personally, and it falls outside your estate so you don't pay probate fees on it. You don't have to go through the probate process with it. Many of my clients like those for the confidentiality, because the thing we didn't talk about with probate is that if you file for probate, all your assets and the values are just sitting there on a public court file available for anyone to see. So if you value this confidentiality and privacy, a lot of people want to use these types of trusts.
Nicole Garton 00:47:19 I should mention in BC because we have unique wills variation legislation. So section 60 of the Wills, Estates and Succession Act of a spouse and or a child doesn't like what you've left them.
Nicole Garton 00:47:31 They have the ability to sue to vary your state. But these trusts, if you've effectively put assets into those trusts, they're often a very effective litigation bar. So I should mention that's quite often the context in BC.
Amanda Doucette 00:47:44 No, that's a great point because that's again, a non-tax reason for doing them right. Helps for creditor protection and helps for these variation claims. And you're correct, like B.C. and Nova Scotia, for example, have very broad categories of who qualifies as a dependent. And you can be a child of your parents till you're 90 and can have an ability to make a claim against the estate versus a province like Saskatchewan, where once you turn 18, unless you have some sort of long term dependency, you no longer have a claim against the estate. And so when you're thinking about protecting assets, that's another great reason, non-tax reason to have those types of trusts. The other type of trust that we see often, I call it like the discretionary family trust. I think that's a standard thing.
Amanda Doucette 00:48:24 And so for many years we saw, as a standard planning tool, if you had a private corporation, for example, and mom and dad owned all of the common shares in that company, they own a company that runs a restaurant, let's say. So ABC Restaurant Company, Mom and dad each owned the common shares, which are the shares that go up and down in value. And we realize that on the death of mom and dad, those shares go into the yard sale and we can defer the tax on the first to die, but once the second of them dies, those shares are on the lawn and we can't pull them off. And likely they paid $50, $20 for those shares. And now, if their restaurant is really successful, the shares are worth, I don't know, $500,000. We have a really large gain. The difference between the $20 and the 500,000 is your gain, half of which is taxable and goes into income. So we have to think about that and how we're going to pay that tax.
Amanda Doucette 00:49:21 So a lot of people do something called an estate freeze, which is you take those common shares, you put them in the tax freezer and think of them like ice cube trays. They go in as liquid, they come out as a frozen ice cube. And now mom and dad own what we call preferred shares, which have a fixed value that is equal to the value of those previous common shares. And every year on a go forward basis, we start thawing the ice cubes a little bit and we start redeeming those shares, and they get paid dividends to sort of get them down as low as possible. And all the new growth in the company accrues to a family trust. A family trust is not you. And so therefore, when you die, the family trust shares do not go on the lawn with the yard sale. The family trust is often run by mom and dad as trustees. The beneficiaries are usually mom, dad, kids. Other companies that are controlled by that group, sometimes other trusts that may include one or more of that group as beneficiaries, and we siphon off additional funds into that trust.
Amanda Doucette 00:50:20 Prior to amendments, the tax rules to bring in the concept of tax on split income, or TOSI, these trusts were incredibly favorable, allowing broad income splitting opportunities, they were fantastic. We saw them being used to fund university education for kids and all sorts of things. Then the government brought in TOSI and kind of shut down most of that. And so now these trusts still have limited tax benefits, but they still have a lot of non-tax benefits. And so again, it's about thinking through what benefits work for you. So for example, these trusts if, let's say Mom and Dad wanted to sell this restaurant business, and they sold it for $1 million, and they wanted to use capital gains exemption, but they didn't have a lot of shares left. But their kids did have capital gains exemption left. Well, you can multiply the capital gains exemption use by allocating some of these sale proceeds out to beneficiaries of the trust to pay, you know, little to no tax, less save. And except for alternative minimum tax, but pay little or no tax on the sale.
Amanda Doucette 00:51:24 So that's a cool reason to have it. The other reason is when you're not ready to transfer power. So if we have parents who have kids that are, let's say, in their early 20s and they haven't quite figured out who's coming into the business yet, mom and dad still want to control. Well, it gives you some time to decide whether or not you're bringing kids into the business. You might be able to funnel some funds out to them. Again, that has limitations due to Tosi, but if you've got them working in the business, you can funnel some money out to them, but you're not giving them the shares yet. It gives them time. also helps to provide an extra layer of protection from a family law perspective, if it is a wholly discretionary trust that nobody is guaranteed a certain piece of the trust. There's arguments that the value of a person's interest in that trust is zero. Now there's case law that goes both ways across the country on this. But I've had a lot of people say it's been helpful for them in a separation context, because you have to disclose all of your assets.
Amanda Doucette 00:52:20 Okay. I own an interest in this family trust. What's the value of your interest? Well, zero. No one's ever given me anything, and no one's planning to give me anything, so that helps as well. But it's something you'd want to be considering what your value is. But that's another example. The thing about trusts that's sort of annoying now, even leaving aside TOSI and this inability to split income like you used to be able to, is that now we have all these filing obligations, tax filing obligations for trust. So for many years, if your trust never really had income at the end of the year, you didn't file a tax return. You didn't have to do anything. Now you do. And so now there's this huge disclosure requirement where the names and social insurance numbers and residency of the beneficiaries, the settlor, the trustees, all have to be disclosed in a schedule 15 on an annual basis, whether or not a tax return technically needs to be filed. It's a lot of information going to the government.
Amanda Doucette 00:53:16 We still don't know exactly what they're going to do with it. It's kind of annoying and it's kind of expensive. The other thing that we have to remember about these family trusts, and the thing I think is most problematic, is they're complex. They add complexity. If having a corporation and knowing you have to move funds from the corporation to yourself already gives you anxiety, you have a separate set of bookkeeping, you've got a different bank account. Well, you add a trust in the mix and you try to open a bank account for the trust. The financial institutions are going to want everything but your firstborn child. Now you're moving money from a corporation into a trust bank account. Now you have bookkeeping for the trust. You have bookkeeping for the corporation. You're moving funds around. Then you have legal documentation showing the moving of those funds. It's not hard, but it's complex. And if you're not happy with that, if that doesn't make you excited, then maybe that's not a structure that works for you.
Amanda Doucette 00:54:07 And so I think recognizing the complexity is also really important.
Nicole Garton 00:54:11 Can you also just touch on the limitations now with respect to real estate? They took out the ability to do primary residence exemption unless it's a qualified disability trust. And we've got these serious disclosure requirements. Do you want to just reference that?
Amanda Doucette 00:54:27 I must say that I, I know them generally, but it's not something that I work in regularly because I have never had a primary residence into a trust in my life. I think that made no sense. But they have done some crackdowns recently that if you take your primary residence and you put it into a trust, there are now limitations, almost a complete restriction on whether or not you can continue to claim your principal residence exemption once it's in the trust, because you don't own it anymore. no different than the fact that if your lifetime capital gains exemption exists with you as a person, not with a trust, not with a corporation, and so you do have to consider what assets you're putting in.
Amanda Doucette 00:55:02 Similarly, if you put a cabin property into a trust, great. But how is it being funded? How are we dealing with renovations? How are we dealing with ongoing costs? And then we have to remember that every 21 years these trusts have a birthday, It's a tax birthday. And every 21 years, the trusts, much like you, are deemed to have a yard sale. And so if you're putting properties like that in your trust, there's going to be this deemed sale of those assets every 21 years and a tax to pay. Where's the money coming from to pay the tax? And so you have to do planning in advance of that 21 years to either give the assets out to capital beneficiaries in the trust, or do some other sort of reorganization work to try to defer the tax problem. But again, that's more complex. That requires pre-planning and it requires some fees and costs.
Nicole Garton 00:55:54 And it's more restrictive now because you used to be able to do a successor trust. They took that away.
Nicole Garton 00:55:58 So I think the take home is consider very carefully if you want to trust there's a lot of increasing complexity and limitations. And, you know, maybe it makes sense from a long term governance perspective, but definitely get talked to someone smart like Amanda and get the good tax advice. so, so this has been amazing. Before we wrap up, I want to do a quick myth busting round, if that's okay. So I'm going to throw out some common assumptions, and I want you to tell me whether they're true or false or somewhere in between. So are you ready?
Amanda Doucette 00:56:29 I'm ready.
Nicole Garton 00:56:30 Okay. Number one, if I have a will, my tax planning is done.
Amanda Doucette 00:56:33 False.
Nicole Garton 00:56:36 Adding my child to the title of my home is a Smart probate strategy. All my riff goes to my name beneficiary, and that's the end of it. No tax consequences for me.
Amanda Doucette 00:56:50 Oh, false. Estate tax planning is mostly for wealthy people.
Amanda Doucette 00:56:53 False, false. Everybody pays tax regardless if you're wealthy or not. Okay?
Nicole Garton 00:56:58 Okay. So is there last question. What are the top three things every Canadian should review this year if they want to avoid tax surprises in their estate? Give us a checklist.
Amanda Doucette 00:57:08 Well, I think you want to review your beneficiary designations and actually review them like a confirmation of who's been named. And make sure you understand the consequence of what you've named. I think that's important. The second thing is you do want to know where your will is. Like, do you have one? Where is it located? Where is the original? I don't care where the copy is. We can't use the copy. We need to know where the original is. There should be just one original, not three originals. So we have lots of confusion about that. I think the third one I would take a peek at is your non-registered accounts, because those ones get forgotten, and those are the ones that are going to generate that kind of surprise tax bill and the first to die. So taking a peek at those and saying to yourself, “okay, if I died tomorrow, what would the tax bill be on those non-registered accounts?” Those would be the three things I'd look at.
Nicole Garton 00:57:49 So Amanda, this has been amazing and you make it so accessible for people. How can people find you to find out more?
Amanda Doucette 00:57:57 Well, I do have a website: taxchick.ca that's where I have a resource section with free blog posts that are available on estate planning, corporate tax, tax litigation issues, stuff for business owners. I also have my podcast, the Tax Chick Podcast, which is on all major streaming platforms. I'm on LinkedIn, so give me a follow: Amanda Doucette. And I'm also on Instagram at tax.chick
Nicole Garton 00:58:23 Right? Amazing. Thank you so much Amanda. This has been a wonderful resource for people.
Amanda Doucette 00:58:27 Thank you for having me.
Nicole Garton 00:58:32 Amanda. Thank you. This has been an incredibly practical conversation. What stands out for me is how many tax issues are hiding in plain sight in most Canadian estate plans. The deem disposition, the RRSP, income inclusion, the risks of do it yourself probate, planning, the 21 year rule for trusts, and the clearance certificate that every executor needs to know about.
Nicole Garton 00:58:54 These are not obscure technicalities. They affect ordinary Canadian families, and the financial consequences of not addressing them can be significant for anyone listening. Here are the key messages. First, estate planning is not just about your will. The tax side of your plan can have a bigger impact on your family than almost any other decision you make. Second, your RRSP or RIFF may be the largest tax liability in your estate, not the largest gift. Make sure your beneficiary designations are coordinated with your will. And third, do not take probate planning shortcuts without understanding the tax trade offs. And fourth. Work with a team. Your lawyer, your accountant and your financial advisor need to be talking to each other, not working in isolation. And then to thank you again for sharing your expertise with us. And thank you to our listeners for joining us on Your Estate Matters. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who may benefit from it and join us next time for another practical conversation about estate planning, estate administration and legacy in Canada.
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered individual, legal, financial, or tax advice. Make sure to consult the advisor of your choice to advise you on your own circumstances.
Nicole Garton 01:00:12 Thank you for joining us for this episode of Your Estate Matters. If you like this podcast, make sure to follow it on your podcast platform of choice. Whether you're planning your own estate or you're acting as executor for somebody else's heritage, trust can help partner with Heritage Trust to protect your family, your assets, and your legacy. If you'd like more information about Heritage Trust, please visit our website at Heritage Trust Now.
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