Bing
In Partnership with
In Partnership with
H&R Block
Sun Life
Meridian Credit Union
CAA
Air Miles

What makes LegalWills.ca the best?

Go to the Legal Wills blog
Go to the Legal Wills blog
Go to the Home Page
Go to the Home Page

 

Gay Wills: Giving You The Choice

By Kathy Plumley
November 3, 2005

Under current legislation, if you don't make a Will your gay partner has no automatic right to your estate. Instead, your family will benefit. If you have no family, the State will benefit, leaving your gay partner with nothing.

If you don't make provision for your partner in your Will, they can apply to the court for help after your death, but they have to prove that they were dependant on you. If you both work or have similar salaries, this may prove very difficult, lengthy and traumatic, with no guaranteed success.

Whilst dealing with the loss of your partner, having to go to court to fight for what you believe is rightly yours, is not a position any of us want to be in.

The Civil Partnership Act will change things and give gay couples more choices:

  • To be treated as a married couple or to be treated as an unmarried couple, the choice is yours.
  • To have automatic rights to some of their deceased partner's estate.
  • To save a large amount of inheritance tax through a tax efficient Will.

 

Why this makes a difference

If you register a Civil Partnership, you can leave everything to your partner free of inheritance tax, even if your estate is worth millions. This is because you get the 'inter-spousal exemption' in the same way as married couples. If you are not Civil Partners, but live together, there is the normal £275,000 inheritance tax threshold.

However, if you don't have a Will, there are further complications and your Civil Partner is only entitled to some of your estate.

 

A tax efficient Will

Whilst both partners are still alive, it is essential to have a tax efficient Will that will ensure further savings of up to £110,000 after the death of the second partner. This is the most effective for Civil Partners who leave everything to each other.

On the death of the second partner there is the normal £275,000 inheritance tax threshold. But, if you arrange for a discretionary trust to be set up that takes you to the threshold level, you can have an estate of £550k before any inheritance tax is paid.

 

Why write a Will?

Writing a Will ensures that you leave your possessions to the person or people you choose. It also ensures your estate is handled exactly as you wish and can considerably reduce or even eliminate the amount of inheritance tax due on your estate.

Your Will can also include or exclude specific people, according to your wishes.

If you already have a Will, it will be revoked when you register your civil partnership (unless it was made in contemplation of Civil Partnership) and you will need to write a new one.

Writing a Will could be one of the most important things you do.

If you want to know more, or are interested in a free consultation, then please e-mail Kathy Plumley at: [email protected] (please put Kathy Plumley in the subject line).

Whilst making your Will, you may wish to consider the following, to give you complete peace of mind. Their benefits far outweigh the nominal costs involved.

 

Enduring Power of Attorney

This is a document that is drawn up whilst you are mentally sound. It allows you to choose the people you want to look after your affairs in the event of you becoming incapable of doing so. This may occur as a result of accident or illness.

Without an Enduring Power of Attorney if you become mentally incapable, the Court of Protection will appoint someone to look after your affairs. This may be someone you know, but it may not. It may be costly and very intrusive.

An Enduring Power of Attorney again gives you the choice to appoint someone you personally trust to look after your affairs if the need arises.

 

Advanced Directive (Living Will)

This is a document that requests your life is not artificially prolonged if you become so ill that you are unable to have a dignified quality of life. It is not a legally recognised document at the moment (although it is being debated in parliament). However, the medical profession are obliged to acknowledge its existence and take account of your wishes.

For more information, e-mail Kathy Plumley at: [email protected].


Create your Will, Power of Attorney and Living Will online at https://www.legalwills.ca/.

For More Information Contact:

LegalWills.ca
Email: [email protected]
Internet: https://www.legalwills.ca/

How It Works

When you create a Will or legal document at LegalWills, you can designate up to 20 different Keyholders®. Your chosen Keyholders® will be given the trust and power to unlock specific information within your account such as health care directives, funeral wishes, final messages, uploaded files, Power of Attorney, or Last Will and Testament.

You can also implement security mechanisms to prevent premature access to these documents. The entire process of creating your Will and other legal documents at LegalWills is seamless and iterative, meaning you can continue to make changes until you're happy with the final product.

Create Your Documents in Five Easy Steps

file
Create Your Documents

Creating your documents is quick and easy with LegalWills. Simply fill out the required fields and proceed to the next step.

key
Select Your Keyholders®

Entrust up to 20 individuals to unlock your wishes when the time is right.

pencil
Edit Your Documents for Up To One Year for Free

Make any changes to your documents using our online service.

lock
Keyholders® Request Access

When the time is right, your selected Keyholders® will have the ability to unlock your wishes.

folder
Documents are Released to Keyholders®

When the time comes and your Keyholders® request access to your documents, your wishes will be entrusted in their hands.

View Sample Will
As seen in
CTV
Toronto Star
Global News
CBC
Globe and Mail
MSN
Huffington Post
CHCH TV

Frequently Asked Questions

There is no requirement to use the services of a lawyer or notary public to prepare your own estate planning documents, including your Last Will and Testament.

The law that defines the legality of a Will is written specifically for each Province, State and Country, but in summary the law requires that the Will is written on a piece of paper and signed in the presence of two witnesses who cannot be beneficiaries to the Will.

Lawyers can certainly help you to prepare your Will, but everybody has a legal right to write their own Will. If you create a document using our service, it must be printed, signed and witnessed according to our instructions, and then it becomes a legal Last Will and Testament.
Quite simply, because we do not provide you with legal advice.

We are giving you direct access to the same software that lawyers use to prepare their documents, but you are doing it yourself. However, if you need custom clauses written to cover an unusual situation, we cannot do that, and we recommend that you seek legal advice. For example, if you have a child with special needs, they would need a trust written for their inheritance. We don't do that.

In most cases, a document written using our service will be word-for-word identical to one prepared by a lawyer.

For a more thorough explanation, please read our blog article: The Cost of a Will in Canada – Explained.

There are no other payments required to prepare your legal Will. You can have a legal Will in your hands for $49.95CAD with nothing else to pay, ever.

What other options are there?
If you wish, you can have your Will reviewed by one of our lawyers for $69.00CAD. Most people do not need this, and would not benefit from it, but if you have selected an option such as "None of the above. Let me describe in detail how to distribute my estate.", then you may want to consider this. (Currently not available in Ontario.)

Your Will must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. If you do not have access to a printer, we can print it for you and mail it out. The cost for this is $9.95CAD, but again, most people do not need this option.

We also offer other services like MyLifeLocker™, a Financial Power of Attorney, and a Living Will. They are not required, but they may be useful to you depending on your situation.

What about document storage?
We do not store physical documents, but we allow you to maintain an account with us if you want to update your document in the future.

The Will service costs $49.95CAD. With this payment, you are able to prepare your Will. It also gives you one year of unlimited updates to the document. You are able to print the document as often as you wish during that first year. You can download it as a PDF or Word file, but to make your document a legal Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. The online version is there for your convenience only.

If you choose not to maintain an account with us after the first year, your initial payment is all you will ever pay. We do not keep credit card details on file and cannot automatically charge beyond this initial payment.

If you wish, you can choose to store your documents online for longer than a year, which will make it easier to make updates in the future to reflect any changes in your personal or financial situation (rather than returning to a lawyer each time). This is of course optional, but it does make the process of maintaining your document more convenient. $11.95CAD will give you one additional year of updates, or you can purchase multiple years: 5 years at $29.95CAD, 10 years at $39.95CAD, 25 years at $79.95CAD ($3.20CAD per year).

Every time you make an update to your Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses again. If you choose not to maintain an account with us, you will always have your printed, signed document. If you don't need to make changes to that document, it will last you for the rest of your life, whether or not you have an account with us.

What happens if I don't maintain an account, and then in a few years I need to update it?
If your account has not been touched in years, and it is inactive, we reserve the right to remove the account. You will receive an email notification that your account might be removed. However, in practice, we have never actually removed any accounts in our over 25 years of operation.

So, in all likelihood, you will be able to simply login to your account and pay $11.95CAD to reactivate it. This will give you one year of unlimited updates from the date of payment. (You will not have to pay for your inactive years.)

Yes.  A Power of Attorney (also known as a Power of Attorney for Finances) and Living Will (also known as a Power of Attorney for Health Care), are very important documents that should be created and updated at the same time as your Will.

This website allows you to create a Will, Expatriate Will, Power of Attorney and Living Will .
Here are just a few differences:

  • We have designed our legal document creation services to be of the best quality available today.    We have evaluated many existing do-it-yourself kits and web-based services, including several of the most popular Canadian legal will kits. We were shocked by the poor quality, limited instructions, and low value for money that many of these do-it-yourself kits provide consumers. 

  • Incredible value for money.   Our membership pricing model allows us to provide you with the most value for your money at prices that are unprecedented in the legal industry. We worked with lawyers to bring you this service, and we paid for their legal services so you don't have to. 

  • Plain language help and instructions.  In addition, all of our services provide you with complete instructions and answer your questions in everyday language, free of legal industry jargon.  We have developed our services based on the requirements of the public, not dictated by the legal profession.  Our wizards, help and information are also designed to be the best on the market and are kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis.  

  • Create your Will from the comfort of your own home.  No lawyer required.  Our unique approach allows you to make use of the ultimate convenience of the Internet to write your Will at your own pace, online, and to make changes online at any time free of charge. 

  • Free unlimited updates.  Don't pay a lawyer every time you need to update your Will. We allow your Will to be kept securely online so that you can make free unlimited updates for as long as you are a member.

  • You can still have it reviewed by a lawyer. We have worked with lawyers in Canada to bring you these services and to ensure that they are of the highest quality. But if you wish, we can still arrange for your documents to be reviewed by one of our lawyers, who will check the documents for consistency and completeness. (Currently not available in Ontario.)

  • The Keyholder® Advantage. You can take advantage of our unique messaging service which allows you to describe the exact location of your Will and to provide a detailed list of assets for your Executor. All for no extra charge. When you pass away, let us worry about communicating this information to the people you specify. There is simply no other company that provides such a complete and convenient service to their customers. For more information, read about The Keyholder® Advantage .

  • We employ a strong focus on protecting the privacy and security of your information.   We use industry standard encryption algorithms for storing all of your private information, and the design of our services ensures that the contents of your information are made available to the specific people designated by yourself, and only at the appropriate time. 

  • Keep informed and up to date.  If you wish, we can inform you by email about any changes in legislation which may have occurred in your jurisdiction that may require changes to your Will.  Or we can send you simple email reminders, no more than once a year, to remind you to consider updating your Will if any significant changes have occurred in your life.  

Other websites and do-it-yourself kits simply do not compare.

Let Us Answer Your Questions

See All Questions
Creating a Will and other legal documents doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. We have hundreds of articles that simplify the process.
Browse Our Blog
Feel free to contact us during office hours, or get answers instantly with our online chatbot.
Contact Us

Popular Articles

Browse Our Blog
Last Will and Testament

The cost of a Will in Canada – explained

Two of the most frequently asked questions we receive at LegalWills.ca are:

1. How come your Wills are so cheap?
2. Why are your Wills so expensive?

In this article, we will discuss the cost of a Will. We will explain the different ways to prepare a Will, why each approach costs what it does, what you get and don't get when preparing a Will in a certain way.
Continue reading
Help to create a Will

The Ultimate Guide to Preparing a Will

Everybody should have a Will. Not making a Will is unfair to those you leave behind.

Even if your plans for estate distribution are simple and you do not have many assets, it is still much easier for the people that you leave behind to work with a Will than to resolve the estate of a person who has died intestate (without a Will).

If you do not feel that you have significant assets now, remember that your Will only comes into effect when you die, not now, and you cannot possibly predict how large your estate will be when your Will is required.
Continue reading
Making a Last Will and Testament

Making a Will in Canada – the Complete Guide to your Options

Your Last Will and Testament allows you to speak after you have passed away. It does absolutely nothing and has no powers whatsoever all the time you are alive.

But as soon as you die your Will has two key functions: it allows you to make key appointments and it allows you to describe the distribution of your assets. These assets include money, possessions, houses, investments, everything that you own.

Making a Will is one of the most important responsibilities of every adult, and it should not be put off until a distant day in the future when you are "old".
Continue reading