Will a Canadian court vary or set aside a will when a parent disinherits a gay/lesbian child because of his/her sexual orientation? The law may be different depending on the province.
In Canada, the law balances the idea of testamentary independence against public policy concerns. While cherishing testamentary freedom, the law intervenes when it finds provisions in the will offensive to public policy and or equity. In Ontario, this restriction on testamentary freedom has been expressed by laws passed to protect spouses (under Part I of the Family Law Act1) and dependents (under Parts II and V of the Succession Law Reform Act2).
Two true stories from British Columbia: In both Patterson v. Lauritsen3 and Peden v. Peden Estate4, a parent disinherited or reduced the inheritance of a child because the parent did not approve of the child’s homosexuality. The Court in each of these cases held that, in today’s society, homosexuality is not a factor that would justify a judicious parent disinheriting or limiting benefits to a child.
Would the same thing happen in Ontario? Maybe – maybe not. In the British Columbia cases, even though the parents had capacity and were not subject to undue influence, their wills were open to challenge on the ground that the parents had disinherited their children without, what the court considered to be, reasonable cause. While the Ontario Court of Appeal has stated that the “moral considerations” underpinning the British Columbia approach apply in Ontario, to my knowledge, there has been no case to date where an Ontario Court has varied a will to benefit a non-dependent disinherited adult child5. In Ontario, except where a will offends public policy, it is still open to debate whether a capable parent, acting voluntarily, is entitled to disinherit a child – however whimsical, mean-spirited, or controlling such action may seem.
A comment made by an Ontario judge in 1995 is of interest insofar as it suggests where an Ontario court may draw the line. In Fox v. Fox Estate6, a decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, the father named his wife the executrix under his will. The income was to be used for the grandchildren with the capital for the son. The will also gave the mother an unfettered discretion to encroach on the capital of the estate for the benefit of her son’s children. She took all the capital, eliminating her son’s inheritance because he was involved with a non-Jew. The judge commented, “….in response to a query from the bench, counsel in this case were not prepared to argue that any court would today uphold a condition in a will which provides that a beneficiary is to be disinherited if he or she marries outside of a particular religious faith”. The Court viewed the mother’s behaviour as being mala fides and contrary to public policy.
Testators that ignore the changing winds of public policy do so at their own peril. In M v. H,7 the Supreme Court of Canada compelled Ontario to change the definition of “spouse” as set out in the support provisions of the Family Law Act. Prior to that case, common-law heterosexual couples were included in the definition of spouse, but gay and lesbian couples were not. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that, for the purposes of support under the Family Law Act, a spouse includes “…either of two persons …”. The court ruled that limiting the definition of “spouse” to heterosexual couples, for the purposes of support, was discriminatory and not justifiable. In Canada today same-sex marriages are legal. It is therefore entirely possible that an Ontario court would set aside a provision in a will that disinherited someone because of his/her sexual orientation, on the grounds that such disinheritance offended public policy.
- Family Law Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. F.3 ↵
- Succession Law Reform Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. S.26 ↵
- Patterson v Lauritsen (1984) CarswellBC 381, 58 BCLOR 182, (1984) 6 WWR 329, 17 ETR 316. Available on line at Patterson v. Lauritsen, 1984 CanLII 353 (BC SC) ↵
- Peden v Peden Estate (2006) CarswellBC 2801, 2006 BCSC 1713, (2007) WDFL 1837. Available on line at Peden v. Peden, Smith et al., 2006 BCSC 1713 (CanLII) ↵
- See Justice Cullity’s 1998 decision of Banton v. Banton, 1998 CanLII 14926 (ON SC) and in particular paragraph 36 where he states, “It is hardly necessary to say that the principle of freedom of testamentary disposition is in the background to the issues relating to the validity of the wills of December 21, 1994 and May 4, 1995. If George Banton had capacity and was not subject to undue influence at the time of the execution of one of those wills, its validity and effect are not open to challenge on the ground that he thereby disinherited his children. In this jurisdiction, unlike others in Canada and elsewhere, unless the children are dependants, a capable parent acting voluntarily, is entitled to do this however mean and ungrateful it may seem, or how selfish the motive; hence the focus in this case, as in so many others, on testamentary capacity and undue influence.”
Compare this with the decision of the Court of appeal in Cummings v. Cummings CanLII 9339 (ON CA). At paragraph 40, Blair J. A. states, “(40) In my view these questions have been resolved by the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Tataryn v. Tataryn Estate 1994 CanLII 51 (S.C.C.), (1994) 2 S.C.R. 807. There, the Court held that a deceased’s moral duty towards his or her dependants is a relevant consideration on a dependants’ relief application, and that judges are not limited to conducting a needs-based economic analysis in determining what disposition to make. In doing so, it rejected the argument that the “judicious father and husband” test should be replaced with a needs-based analysis: see para. 23. I see no reason why the principles of Tataryn should not apply equally in Ontario, even though they were enunciated in the context of the British Columbia Wills Variation Act R.S.B.C. 1979, c. 435, in which the language is somewhat different from that of the Succession Law Reform Act.
I also recommend the reader to see Susan J. Woodley’s paper entitled “The (Almost, Possible, Probable) Right of an Adult Child to Receive Support”, presented at the Ontario Bar Association 2009 Institute of Continuing Legal Education. ↵
- Fox v. Fox Estate 1996 CanLII 779 (ON C.A.), (1996), 28 O.R. (3d) 496, 10 E.T.R. (2d) 229 (C.A.) ↵
- M. v. H. (1999) 2 S.C.R. 3. I refer the reader to an article written by Mary C. Hurly entitled “Sexual Orientation and Legal Rights”. The article appears on the Parliament of Canada Website and can be found at Sexual Orientation and Legal Rights (PRB 08-49E) . When considering the impact of the decision and how it reflects on public policy in Canada her conclusion speaks to how a court may view the public policy issue. “Judicial and legislative reforms, particularly since the M. v. H. decision in 1999, have effected a significant shift in Canadian society with respect to recognition of the legal status and claims of same-sex conjugal couples. The watershed nature of this shift is illustrated, most notably, by federal legislation sanctioning same-sex marriage.
Opponents of these reforms continue to argue that the extension of same-sex rights in general, and same-sex marriage in particular, undermine the traditional family and family values. At the same time, some gay and lesbian couples (like some heterosexual couples) do not want either the legal obligations or the benefits that flow from spousal status or marriage. As the 2002 report of the former Law Commission of Canada and other indicators suggest, the question of whether the matter of entitlements based on the marital or conjugal nature of a partnership should be re-examined remains open.” ↵
