Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 7 45 Wills, trusts and estates boutiques A s the baby boomers age, it impacts society at almost every level — but in some areas more than others. "Dealing with the aging client or older adult is the most significant trend right now," says Kimberly Whaley, founding partner at WEL Partners in Toronto. In many ways, this area of law is the most personal, dealing with family dynamics, intimate issues such as planning for care and trying to discern if the client is well enough to make deci- sions or if someone — usually a child — is pulling the strings. "What are our professional obligations? The law presumes capacity, but we also have a moral and ethical obligation to ensure we're serving our clients in accordance with our rules of professional conduct," Whaley says. "If there are red flags our clients may not have the requisite cognitive ability or functioning, how do we approach it?" Genevieve Taylor, principal lawyer at Legacy + Trust Lawyers in Vancouver, calls it "tricky" to balance getting the business side done while managing the emotional side. "At a high level it's about how we get wealth from one genera- tion to the next," Taylor says. "But there are a lot of questions that aren't about that specifically — they're more about how do we strike a balance between the financial planning side of it and the preservation of quality of life and all those kinds of things." There are also more disputes stemming from somebody's incapacity, not necessarily their death, says Taylor. People are suffering from a loss of capacity either earlier in life or are living longer after, Taylor says, and what she sees in her practice are "tensions that build up in a family over who runs the show, who runs the assets and also the personal and health-care issues are becoming more important because it's lasting longer." "That's changed some of the practice and also changed the way people who deal with disputes are dealing with those dis- putes — sometimes they're being litigated before the person has actually passed away," she says. "It's accelerating things." Another challenge both lawyers face in their practice is clients' multi-jurisdictional lives. "People are so mobile — even for people who don't have huge wealth they can still have complicated estates and how do you deal with those complexities without the cost just ballooning and having them not do the planning?" asks Taylor. Whaley says she sees abuse most often at the hands of family members. It's usually children stealing from parents because they are no longer capable, which goes back to the capacity dilemma. "How do I know a client has the wherewithal to commence litigation even though they're disgruntled or upset or suspicious that something's happened?" This issue is compounded again by complex family structures, including second, third or even fourth marriages, common-law partnerships, same-sex unions and the children, stepchildren, adopted children or in some cases genetically procured children, who all have to be considered in wills, trusts and estates planning. Along with these sophisticated personal arrangements, people We are pleased to announce that Hull & Hull LLP has once again been named one of the Top 5 Wills, Trusts & Estates boutiques by Canadian Lawyer Magazine. Thank you to all of our peers for this honour and recognition. Hull&Hull_CL_Jan_17.indd 1 2016-12-15 9:35 AM

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