Life insurance in Dollard-des-Ormeaux

CWCC works with families, professionals and business owners in Dollard-des-Ormeaux and the West Island on life insurance, living benefits, succession planning and capital strategy: entirely online. The firm is registered with the Autorité des marchés financiers under number 602293, where Jose Salloum practises as a Financial Security Advisor.

What makes Dollard-des-Ormeaux different

Dollard-des-Ormeaux is an established residential community, where many families have lived in the same house for twenty or thirty years.

A stable, homeowning population. Single-family houses bought long ago, whose value followed the island’s without anyone setting out to make it happen.

A great many professionals and executives. With employer pension plans, substantial RRSPs and long careers.

A diverse, multilingual community. Families from everywhere, many of whom keep ties elsewhere in the country or abroad.

A population ageing in place. The children have gone, the parents stayed, and the question of passing things on now arises in earnest.

What happens before the will applies

This is the central question here, and it is probably the least well understood element of Quebec succession law. Most people believe that on death, the will applies. In Quebec, two operations come first.

First operation: the family patrimony

For spouses who are married or in a civil union, the Civil Code sets out a group of assets called the family patrimony, whose value is divided between the spouses on death as on separation.

It includes, among other things, the family residences, the furniture in them, vehicles used for family travel, and the rights accrued during the marriage in a pension plan and certain registered plans.

The decisive point is this: the division is of value and it does not depend on whose name is on the title. A house bought in one spouse’s name alone still enters the calculation.

Second operation: the matrimonial regime

Once the family patrimony is divided, the matrimonial regime applies to what remains. Partnership of acquests is the default regime for marriages celebrated since the early nineteen-seventies; separation as to property requires a notarial marriage contract.

Each produces a different result, and a great many couples do not know which one governs them. Your marriage contract, if there is one, says so: it is a document worth locating before it is needed.

Only then, the third: the will

It is only after those two steps that the estate takes shape and the will determines who receives what.

From that follows a practical consequence many people do not anticipate: a will can be perfectly drafted and still produce a result quite different from the one intended, because it disposes only of what remains after the first two operations.

All of the above is family law and succession law. Only a notary or a lawyer can tell you what it produces in your situation, and they are the ones to ask.

Common-law partners are outside all of this

It has to be said separately because the misunderstanding is common and expensive: in Quebec, common-law partners are covered by neither the family patrimony nor a matrimonial regime, and they do not inherit without a will.

That holds however long the relationship has lasted and even where there are children. A common-law couple with no will does not simply have incomplete planning: they have none at all.

What insurance changes in this picture

A death benefit payable to a named beneficiary is generally not part of the estate, and so it does not wait on the operations described above.

That is what makes it, in a Quebec file, the most predictable element of the planning: the amount, the recipient and the timing are known in advance, while the rest depends on calculations that will only be done after death.

Two honest qualifications belong here. The first is that designating a married or civil-union spouse is in principle irrevocable unless stated otherwise, which has consequences on separation. The second is that insurance does not replace a will: it settles one part of the problem and leaves all the rest entirely open.

The rest of the Quebec framework

The liquidator replaces the executor. A notarial will does not have to be probated, while a holograph will or one made before witnesses does, which adds a step and a delay.

A family with part of itself living outside Quebec should know that these rules have no direct equivalent in the common law provinces: advice received elsewhere does not apply here without checking.

What we do for families here

We ask three questions at the outset: are you married, in a civil union or common-law partners; is there a marriage contract; and do you know where it is. Those three answers change everything else in the conversation.

We then check the beneficiary designations on every contract and every account, and flag the cases where a designation may be irrevocable.

We send you to your notary for everything touching the family patrimony, the matrimonial regime and the will. We do not go there in their place.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. If you have a marriage contract, mention it: it is the document that determines the most and the one found least often. At the end you will know whether this belongs in your situation, and if the answer is no, you will hear it during the meeting.

Frequently asked questions