I’ve had the dubious privilege of serving as the executor of the estate of my late mother, who was predeceased by my father. I’ve been documenting my journey along the way (previous instalment here).

This instalment is subtitled “Endgame” because late last week I received a Clearance Certificate from CRA. The Clearance Certificate allows me as the executor to distribute the funds in the estate to the beneficiaries without worrying that the CRA will come knocking on my door at some future date looking for taxes¹.

So now it is time to move money around from estate to beneficiaries, close accounts and shred the piles of paper in the filing cabinet. Money exists in three places: a CIBC bank account (not an estate account), a CIBC estate account, and in a BMO Investorline estate account.

CIBC Bank Account

Thanks to the advice of a friend who went through this before me, I had a joint chequing account with my mother. It was her account, and I never touched it, but when she died, the account became mine completely, no different than the other chequing account I hold at CIBC. This arrangement proved very handy in the early days of the estate, as I was able to pay funeral expenses out of this account without being out of pocket myself. The balance was low here, and a few e-Transfers to the beneficiaries later, the funds were cleared. A call to CIBC telephone banking (a surprisingly painless experience), and this account was closed from the comfort of my couch.

BMO Investorline

The vast majority of the estate funds are held at BMO Investorline, since I was acting as my parents’ DIY advisor for about 10 years. When my mother died, her RRIF and TFSA passed to her beneficiaries outside of the probate process (you’ve done this, right? Read more here). Her non-registered funds were converted into a brand new estate account and all the assets were transferred in kind. I could not access this account until I had a probated will. With full access, I eventually converted all the holdings into non-interest bearing cash; all that happened over a year ago (December 2024, to be exact). The account has been largely dormant since then, although I did pay the whopping tax bill for my mother’s Final Return² from it.

Moving the funds out of BMO Investorline couldn’t be easier; thanks to their AccountLink service, you can write cheques against the cash balance held in your non-registered Investorline account. They do charge $1 for each transaction after the first 2 in any calendar month, so I have to make sure I leave enough cash behind to deal with that³.

CIBC Estate Account

Estate accounts are required to deposit cheques made out to the estate. One possible source of such a payment is CRA⁴, the other is death benefits from CPP/QPP and/or life insurance policies. My experience with the creation and management of a CIBC estate account was a total disaster. Something that should be relatively straightforward is inexplicably very labour intensive. The reasons are probably only knowable to CIBC, but I’ll give my perspective here:

• The workflow has not been updated in decades. Opening an estate account required me to make an appointment at the bank. At this appointment, I sat in a chair in an office while I watched the bank employee type my information into some sort of online form. My involvement at this meeting was limited to producing a death certificate and repeating answers to questions that the bank already had in their systems (my name/address etc etc).
• The branch employees do not understand how estate accounts work and they rely on a centrally located help desk to guide them through the process. I know this because the branch employee inadvertently gave me the number to this help desk and the very helpful employee I spoke to there was confused that a customer rather than a branch was calling.
• There are no electronic records, no electronic access to estate accounts. Deposit a cheque? Visit the bank. Want the balance? Visit the bank. It’s all very circa 1970.
• And, lastly, for all this, they have the gall to charge a $5 monthly service fee for “record keeping”.

Anyway, I am guessing that all the major banks are terrible with estates, but it’s hard to imagine a worse experience than with CIBC.

So, to close this account, I need an appointment (of course). The soonest one I could get at my local branch was a week away. I’ve compiled all the materials needed to unlock the funds (probated will, death certificate, blood sample) so I’m hoping this is a “one and done” kind of visit, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

What’s especially annoying about the estate account is that it has a relatively small amount of money in it, growing smaller monthly thanks to the monthly service fee.

But this chapter is nearly over. Make no mistake, serving as an executor is a lot of work and requires a lot of patience.

1. Per https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/life-events/doing-taxes-someone-died/clearance-certificate.html: A clearance certificate will allow you, as the legal representative, to distribute assets without the risk of being personally responsible for unpaid amounts the person who died, estate, trust, or corporation might owe to the CRA. ↩︎
2. RRIFs and non-registered accounts generate a lot of tax since they are assumed to be sold and converted to income in the hands of the account holder on the day of death. It’s nearly unavoidable, but I wrote a bit about reducing that tax bomb here. ↩︎
3. I can only imagine how much work it would be should I end up needing to clear a negative balance in a BMO Investorline Estate account. I wouldn’t know where to begin, ↩︎
4. In my case, the estate tax return had a refund. Not really sure why, one would have presumed that paying thousands of dollars to an accountant would result in a penny-perfect return, but you’d evidently be wrong about that. ↩︎