Estate Planning for Blended Families

Once your spouse inherits outright, the assets are theirs. They can rewrite their will, remarry, or spend it. Nothing legally obliges them to preserve anything for your children, however sincere the promise was — and their own children's interests will point the other way.

The most common outcome is not bad faith but drift: a new will years later, a new relationship, and children from the first marriage receiving nothing. By then there is no remedy short of expensive and uncertain litigation.

A **spousal trust** gives your surviving spouse the income and use of assets for life, with the capital passing to your children on their death. It supports the spouse without letting them redirect the inheritance, and it can qualify for a tax-deferred rollover if properly structured.

Getting it right matters: the spouse must be entitled to all income during their lifetime and no one else may access capital, or the rollover is lost. Choose the trustee carefully — a spouse as sole trustee over a trust benefiting your children creates exactly the conflict you were trying to avoid.

Most provinces allow a **dependant** who was not adequately provided for to claim against the estate, and courts can vary the will. Second spouses, minor children and adult children with disabilities are the usual claimants.

This is why disinheriting is rarely a clean solution. A plan that provides visibly inadequately for someone with a support claim invites litigation that consumes the estate. In British Columbia the court's power to vary a will is notably broad, extending to independent adult children.

**Beneficiary designations** on registered accounts and insurance pass outside the will entirely. An ex-spouse still named on an RRSP overrides the most carefully drafted will — review every designation whenever the plan changes.

**Joint ownership** with right of survivorship passes to the survivor, bypassing your will and often defeating the intended split. And a matrimonial home may carry statutory spousal rights that constrain what you can do with it regardless of whose name is on title.

Quebec differs materially: family patrimony rules apply on death, notarial wills avoid probate verification, and the legal regime governing your marriage affects what forms part of the estate. Quebec also has no equivalent of the common-law dependant-relief regime in the same form.

**Mutual wills** — reciprocal wills with an agreement not to revoke — are sometimes proposed as a solution. They can create a binding obligation, but they are inflexible, litigated frequently, and generally a poorer tool than a properly drafted trust. Treat them as a last resort rather than a first idea.