Life insurance in Nanaimo

CWCC works with Nanaimo and central Vancouver Island families, blended families, retirees and business owners on life insurance, living benefits, succession planning and capital strategy: entirely online. The firm is registered with Quebec’s AMF under number 602293 and is licensed to place insurance in British Columbia, where Jose Salloum is a licensed life insurance agent with the Insurance Council of British Columbia.

What makes Nanaimo different

Nanaimo receives a great many people who are starting something again: a second career, an early retirement, a new life as a couple. That reality turns up directly in the estate files we are asked to look at here.

A population older than the provincial average. People arriving from the mainland, often after selling a house in the metropolitan region, with wealth already built.

A great many second marriages. Couples formed at fifty or sixty, each arriving with adult children, a house and a separate financial history.

A services and small business economy. Health, education, construction, tourism, marine transport. A great many self-employed people with no group plan.

Families spread out geographically. Adult children often live on the mainland or in another province, which complicates any estate settlement.

The blended family: the problem a will does not solve on its own

This is the central question here, and it produces the most lasting conflicts we see.

The usual reflex

The formula most couples adopt is simple and looks fair: everything to the surviving spouse, then, on that spouse’s death, everything to the children. It works perfectly in a first marriage where the children belong to both spouses.

In a second marriage it contains a flaw few people see at signing: once the assets pass to the surviving spouse, they belong to that spouse. They can write a new will, remarry, change a beneficiary designation, or simply spend the estate. Nothing legally obliges them to carry out the promise made to the spouse who died.

We do not attribute bad intentions to anyone. We simply observe that a promise rarely survives twenty years, a new relationship or an expensive illness, and that the children of a first marriage then have no straightforward recourse.

The jointly held house

There is a further element a will does not touch at all. Property held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship passes automatically to the survivor: it is not part of the estate and the will has nothing to say about it. A couple buying together in a second marriage can therefore transfer the family’s most valuable asset without it appearing anywhere in the planning.

What life insurance does here

A policy naming the children of a first marriage directly solves the problem another way: it pays them a certain amount, on the parent’s death, outside the estate, without depending on the surviving spouse’s wishes and without anyone having to contest anything in court.

The surviving spouse keeps the house and the security they need. The children receive what the parent meant them to have. Nobody has to wait for the other’s death to find out where they stand, and it is often that, more than the amount, which preserves the family relationships.

Drafting the will, any agreement between spouses and any trust belong to a lawyer. We work on the insurance part.

The designation nobody updated

This is the most common error in the entire field, and the most painful, because it takes ten minutes to fix while the person is alive and cannot be fixed afterwards.

A beneficiary designation recorded on an insurance policy, an RRSP or a RRIF is generally followed exactly as written. It does not cancel itself on separation, and a new will does not replace it.

The result presents itself the same way again and again: the money is paid to a former spouse nobody has seen in fifteen years, while the current family looks at a will that said something else. Check every designation after any separation, any remarriage and any birth; it is the least expensive and most effective step in the whole of estate planning.

What British Columbia adds

The province charges probate fees calculated on the value of assets passing through the estate, and the process takes time. A death benefit paid to a named beneficiary does not travel that route.

British Columbia law also allows a spouse or a child to apply to vary a will they consider inadequate, even a valid one. In a blended family that possibility cuts both ways: it can protect a child who was left out, and it can also open litigation between the two sides of a family. That is one more reason to have the will drafted here, by a lawyer here.

What we do for families here

In a second marriage we start with three questions: who depends on you today, what you want the children of a first marriage to receive, and whose name is on the house. The answers almost always reveal a gap between the intention and the documents.

Then comes a reading of every beneficiary designation, the policies already in force, the will and the province it was drafted in.

We coordinate with your lawyer and your accountant. Will drafting, trusts and family law belong to them; we handle the insurance part.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. If you know whose name is on the house and when your beneficiary designations were last checked, the conversation will go straight to the point. 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