Life insurance in Repentigny

CWCC works with retirees, families and business owners in Repentigny and Lanaudière 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 Repentigny different

Repentigny was built by a generation that stayed. The families who bought their houses in the seventies and eighties are still here, and they are now facing a set of questions that did not arise at the time.

A population ageing in place. A high rate of home ownership, mortgages long since paid, and a great many people retired or close to it.

A great many retirees who leave for the winter. Florida, Arizona, sometimes Mexico or Portugal, for three, four or six months a year.

Adult children settled nearby. Often in the same ring of suburbs, which makes family arrangements simpler here than in many other regions.

A base of self-employed people and small businesses. Retail, construction, professional services, with no group plan behind them.

Wintering south: three regimes, three calendars

This is the central question here, and the mistake we see most often is not a bad choice: it is the confusion between three separate regimes that count days differently and answer to different authorities.

One: your provincial health coverage

Quebec’s public health insurance plan requires a minimum period of presence in the province during a calendar year for coverage to be maintained. Exceptions exist, and a prolonged absence must in some cases be declared in advance.

Someone who exceeds the permitted period without having made the arrangements can have coverage suspended, with a waiting period on return. The rules, the number of days and the exceptions belong to the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Quebec and they change: check with them before leaving, every year.

Two: your travel insurance

The public plan reimburses a fraction of medical costs incurred abroad, and that fraction bears no relation to the real cost of an American hospital stay. Travel insurance fills the gap.

The clause that voids the most claims, by a wide margin, is the stability of pre-existing conditions clause. It requires that your health has not changed during a defined period before departure. What counts as a change is broader than people assume: an adjusted dose, a new medication, a test whose result is still pending.

Read that clause before you pay, not after a refusal. If your medication was changed recently, say so when you apply: a higher premium is infinitely better than a policy that will not pay.

Three: American tax residency

The United States applies a presence test that adds up days spent on its territory, not for a single year, but across three consecutive years, with earlier years counting for a fraction.

Someone who spends the same number of months south each winter can therefore cross the threshold without anything having changed in their habits. There is a statement allowing, in certain conditions, a closer connection to Canada to be established, and it has to be filed within the deadlines.

This is the ground of a cross-border tax specialist and of nobody else. We flag the test because many people count their days over a single year.

And life insurance in all of this

A policy issued in Canada generally stays in force wherever you are, and the death benefit is payable even if death occurs abroad. Two checks are still worth making.

The first concerns the particular exclusions some contracts carry for prolonged stays in certain countries. The second concerns the formalities: a death abroad calls for additional documents, and settlement takes longer. A family that knows in advance where the contracts are and who to notify gains weeks.

The Quebec framework

Quebec follows the Civil Code: the liquidator replaces the executor, a notarial will does not require probate while a holograph will does, and a common-law partner does not inherit without a will.

A couple away for several months a year should check two things before each departure: that a protection mandate exists, and that a trusted person still here knows where the documents are. These are ten-minute precautions.

What we do for families here

With a couple who winter south, we start by separating the three regimes and saying which one answers to whom. It is often the first time anyone has done that clearly, and it settles half the worry.

We then look at the protections already in place, the beneficiary designations, and what the family still here would know to do if something happened during the absence.

We send you to a cross-border tax specialist as soon as days spent in the United States become a question, and to your notary for the mandate.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. It can perfectly well be held while you are south, which several of our clients prefer. 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