In one of our blog articles on dependency relief, ( just use the search window ) we talked about the case of Cassan v. Giroux. Dependency relief is the remedy the court offers to dependants, such as a wife, or common law spouse who feels they were not adequately cared for in the deceased’s will. One of the turning points in the trial were the contents of the obituary. The deceased’s children who wrote the obituary described the applying common law spouse as the deceased long-time partner and described the common law partner’s daughter as his stepdaughter, and grandchildren as his step grandchildren. The children attempted out of the other side of their mouth to argue that the putative common law spouse was only one of the deceased’s friends. Estate Lawyers and Estate Litigation Lawyers have to be alive to the many factors a court will consider to seeing if an applicant was a common law spouse. Look at our blog Dependency Relief for the leading cases on the point.
In other words, be careful what you write in the obituary as all of your actions both before and after death will be looked at with a magnifying glass. Experienced Will and Estate Lawyers understand that.
