Jessica is a member of Legacy’s Estate and Trust Litigation Group. Prior to joining Legacy, Jessica articled at a large regional firm. Jessica received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Simon Fraser University in 2017 and her law degree from the Peter A. Allard School of Law in 2021. After law school, Jessica completed a clerkship with the BC Supreme Court. Jessica is fluent in Korean.
Read ArticleBetony is a member of Legacy’s Estate and Trust Litigation Group. She represents clients on a variety of complex estate and trust matters including the validity of wills, wills variation claims, contentious issues with the administration of estates, and disputes involving trusts and gifts to adult children. She also assists clients with Committeeship applications as well as other elder law and incapacity proceedings. Betony draws from her broad experience in private practice and in-house counsel to provide knowledgeable, yet practical solutions for her clients. Betony has trial experience in both the British…
Read ArticleJames Zaitsoff is a Principal and is the head of Legacy’s Estate and Trust Litigation Group
Read ArticleI. Introduction The concept of who actually owns an asset arises frequently in the areas of both family and estate law. Families often transfer ownership to real estate and other assets without considering the legal consequences of the transfer. The transfer of an asset may be from one spouse to another, from a parent to a child, or even just the promise of a transfer in the future, leading to a course of conduct on the part of the person believing they will be a future owner. Whether the issue of ownership arises upon the dissolution of a marriage, or a marriage like relationship, or the death of a…
Read ArticleI. Introduction A. Then and Now: The Duty to Account All personal representatives and trustees (throughout this paper the term “trustee” represents both a true trustee and personal representative) have a duty to account to persons with a beneficial interest in the estate (Deutschmann Estate v. Fallis, 2011 BCSC 1009 at para. 53, affirmed 2011 BCCA 404). The origins of the duty to account are traced, as with much of the law in the area of wills and estates, to the Ecclesiastical Courts of England. In his paper “The Last Word: Passing the Accounts in a Contentious Estate”, Scott Kerwin…
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