What probate costs in Ontario

Probate is the court confirming that a will is valid and that the executor named in it has authority to act. Banks and land registry offices generally will not deal with an executor until they can see that confirmation, which is why most estates holding a house or a significant account go through it.

The cost is a tax on the value of the estate, not a fee for the work. It is charged once, on the total, and Ontario rounds the estate value up to the nearest thousand before applying the rate.

The rate itself is modest. What catches families is when it falls due: generally at the time the application is filed, before the estate has been distributed and often before anything has been sold.

So the executor, usually a widow or an adult child, needs to find several thousand dollars at the point when the estate's own money is locked up and unavailable. That is the practical failure. It has nothing to do with whether the will was well drafted.

It is also the part of estate planning that insurance actually solves, which is the honest reason a planner rather than a lawyer is writing this page. A policy pays quickly and outside the estate, so the money to settle the estate arrives before the estate itself is available.

The tax is calculated on the value of the assets that pass through the estate. Assets with a named beneficiary, such as registered accounts and life insurance, generally pass directly to that person and are not part of that calculation. Property held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship generally passes to the survivor the same way.

That is a description of how the rules work, not a plan. Naming a beneficiary or adding a name to a title has consequences well beyond probate, some of them expensive and some of them permanent, and doing it for one reason without understanding the others is how families end up in court. It is worth walking through with somebody before anything is changed.