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Probate Calculator

Probate is the official legal process that accepts a Will as your official Last Will and Testament and officially grants your Executor the power to serve as your Estate Administrator.

Probate fees (or estate administration taxes) are calculated on the total value, in Canadian dollars, of a deceased person's estate.

Every Province and Territory in Canada has its own formula for calculating the probate fees payable.

Canadian Probate Fee Calculator

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What is Probate?

Probate is the official legal process that accepts a Will as your official Last Will and Testament, and officially grants your Executor the power to serve as your Estate Administrator.

When your Will is probated, the person named as the Executor in your Will is given a "Grant of Letters of Administration", or equivalent depending on your Province/Territory. For example, in Ontario this is a "Certificate of Appointment of Estate Trustee".

Your Executor is responsible for gathering up your assets and distributing them according to the instructions in your Will. The Grant of Administration is a critical document that is presented to banks and other financial institutions by your Executor. The banks can then be assured that they are giving the assets to the right person and that the Will has been accepted as the official Last Will and Testament.

In Canada, almost all Wills are probated because the banks need to see the Grant of Letters of Administration. The only exception is when all assets are passing to a joint asset holder and the bank is not exposed to any risk of giving the asset to the wrong person.

We provide a more complete overview of the probate process and ways to reduce probate fees in our accompanying blog article.
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Frequently Asked Questions

There is no requirement to use the services of a lawyer or notary public to prepare your own estate planning documents, including your Last Will and Testament.

The law that defines the legality of a Will is written specifically for each Province, State and Country, but in summary the law requires that the Will is written on a piece of paper and signed in the presence of two witnesses who cannot be beneficiaries to the Will.

Lawyers can certainly help you to prepare your Will, but everybody has a legal right to write their own Will. If you create a document using our service, it must be printed, signed and witnessed according to our instructions, and then it becomes a legal Last Will and Testament.
Quite simply, because we do not provide you with legal advice.

We are giving you direct access to the same software that lawyers use to prepare their documents, but you are doing it yourself. However, if you need custom clauses written to cover an unusual situation, we cannot do that, and we recommend that you seek legal advice. For example, if you have a child with special needs, they would need a trust written for their inheritance. We don't do that.

In most cases, a document written using our service will be word-for-word identical to one prepared by a lawyer.

For a more thorough explanation, please read our blog article: The Cost of a Will in Canada – Explained.

There are no other payments required to prepare your legal Will. You can have a legal Will in your hands for $49.95CAD with nothing else to pay, ever.

What other options are there?
If you wish, you can have your Will reviewed by one of our lawyers for $69.00CAD. Most people do not need this, and would not benefit from it, but if you have selected an option such as "None of the above. Let me describe in detail how to distribute my estate.", then you may want to consider this. (Currently not available in Ontario.)

Your Will must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. If you do not have access to a printer, we can print it for you and mail it out. The cost for this is $9.95CAD, but again, most people do not need this option.

We also offer other services like MyLifeLocker™, a Financial Power of Attorney, and a Living Will. They are not required, but they may be useful to you depending on your situation.

What about document storage?
We do not store physical documents, but we allow you to maintain an account with us if you want to update your document in the future.

The Will service costs $49.95CAD. With this payment, you are able to prepare your Will. It also gives you one year of unlimited updates to the document. You are able to print the document as often as you wish during that first year. You can download it as a PDF or Word file, but to make your document a legal Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. The online version is there for your convenience only.

If you choose not to maintain an account with us after the first year, your initial payment is all you will ever pay. We do not keep credit card details on file and cannot automatically charge beyond this initial payment.

If you wish, you can choose to store your documents online for longer than a year, which will make it easier to make updates in the future to reflect any changes in your personal or financial situation (rather than returning to a lawyer each time). This is of course optional, but it does make the process of maintaining your document more convenient. $11.95CAD will give you one additional year of updates, or you can purchase multiple years: 5 years at $29.95CAD, 10 years at $39.95CAD, 25 years at $79.95CAD ($3.20CAD per year).

Every time you make an update to your Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses again. If you choose not to maintain an account with us, you will always have your printed, signed document. If you don't need to make changes to that document, it will last you for the rest of your life, whether or not you have an account with us.

What happens if I don't maintain an account, and then in a few years I need to update it?
If your account has not been touched in years, and it is inactive, we reserve the right to remove the account. You will receive an email notification that your account might be removed. However, in practice, we have never actually removed any accounts in our over 24 years of operation.

So, in all likelihood, you will be able to simply login to your account and pay $11.95CAD to reactivate it. This will give you one year of unlimited updates from the date of payment. (You will not have to pay for your inactive years.)

Yes.  A Power of Attorney (also known as a Power of Attorney for Finances) and Living Will (also known as a Power of Attorney for Health Care), are very important documents that should be created and updated at the same time as your Will.

This website allows you to create a Will, Expatriate Will, Power of Attorney and Living Will .
Here are just a few differences:

  • We have designed our legal document creation services to be of the best quality available today.    We have evaluated many existing do-it-yourself kits and web-based services, including several of the most popular Canadian legal will kits. We were shocked by the poor quality, limited instructions, and low value for money that many of these do-it-yourself kits provide consumers. 

  • Incredible value for money.   Our membership pricing model allows us to provide you with the most value for your money at prices that are unprecedented in the legal industry. We worked with lawyers to bring you this service, and we paid for their legal services so you don't have to. 

  • Plain language help and instructions.  In addition, all of our services provide you with complete instructions and answer your questions in everyday language, free of legal industry jargon.  We have developed our services based on the requirements of the public, not dictated by the legal profession.  Our wizards, help and information are also designed to be the best on the market and are kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis.  

  • Create your Will from the comfort of your own home.  No lawyer required.  Our unique approach allows you to make use of the ultimate convenience of the Internet to write your Will at your own pace, online, and to make changes online at any time free of charge. 

  • Free unlimited updates.  Don't pay a lawyer every time you need to update your Will. We allow your Will to be kept securely online so that you can make free unlimited updates for as long as you are a member.

  • You can still have it reviewed by a lawyer. We have worked with lawyers in Canada to bring you these services and to ensure that they are of the highest quality. But if you wish, we can still arrange for your documents to be reviewed by one of our lawyers, who will check the documents for consistency and completeness. (Currently not available in Ontario.)

  • The Keyholder® Advantage. You can take advantage of our unique messaging service which allows you to describe the exact location of your Will and to provide a detailed list of assets for your Executor. All for no extra charge. When you pass away, let us worry about communicating this information to the people you specify. There is simply no other company that provides such a complete and convenient service to their customers. For more information, read about The Keyholder® Advantage .

  • We employ a strong focus on protecting the privacy and security of your information.   We use industry standard encryption algorithms for storing all of your private information, and the design of our services ensures that the contents of your information are made available to the specific people designated by yourself, and only at the appropriate time. 

  • Keep informed and up to date.  If you wish, we can inform you by email about any changes in legislation which may have occurred in your jurisdiction that may require changes to your Will.  Or we can send you simple email reminders, no more than once a year, to remind you to consider updating your Will if any significant changes have occurred in your life.  

Other websites and do-it-yourself kits simply do not compare.

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