Michael Tringham examines recent cases across the seas
Oh, brother!
Wise words from Canada, designed to encourage negotiation rather than litigation, are reported in Deadbeat, a publication of the Ontario Bar Association. As John O’Sullivan, a litigation partner at Toronto law firm Weir Foulds LLP, sums them up: costs will not be routinely ordered out of the estate and parties “cannot treat the assets of the estate as a kind of ATM bank machine...”.
His comments follow an unreported decision by Justice Pitt of the Ontario Superior Court in Estate of Elizabeth Gyetvan. Elizabeth Gyetvan had left three parcels of real estate to her two sons, the co-executors and sole beneficiaries of her estate. The properties had still not been transferred to the sons more than four years after Elizabeth’s death because of bitterness between them. One brother applied for a declaration that the properties had vested by virtue of s 9 of the Estates Administration Act, for an order requiring the land registry office to register the brothers’ ownership, and for an order for the sale of all three properties under the
