I served as the executor of my late mother’s estate who was predeceased by my father. They were DIY investors, with the Y being “me” having had Power of Attorney for their retirement investments. Both of my parents were of sound mind; they asked me to take over their finances because my father correctly surmised that he was paying a lot of money for little benefit to his wealth advisor at BMO.
I’m in the last days of settling the estate; most of the funds have been disbursed but I’m holding a small amount to deal with unanticipated expenses as I close out the final account.
I figured it might be useful to executors (or executors-to-be) what the various estate milestones were so you can set expectations with beneficiaries. Of course every estate is different, but some of the milestones I passed will potentially be useful nonetheless.
The Starting Line
- My mother’s will was prepared in the province of Ontario, and that’s where she lived
- She collected OAS, but not CPP. Since she lived in Quebec for her working life, she contributed to the QPP, a different animal altogether.
- She had no real estate or large valuable things to sell. She lived in a one-bedroom retirement home with very limited space. Things like properties or vehicles and collectables add a whole other realm of complexity that I didn’t have to deal with.
- Her primary savings were at BMO Investorline in the form of a RRIF, a TFSA and a non-registered account. These accounts held mostly ETFs, and some individual stocks. I had full control over these accounts while my mother was alive, so I knew exactly what was in them. (And any ACBs for things held in non-registered accounts; brokers are notoriously bad at tracking this sort of thing accurately).
- Her day to day banking was at CIBC, and I was a joint account holder. Being a joint account holder means I had full control of the funds therein both before and after her death.
- Her will named me as the sole executor and me and my siblings were the beneficiaries. Having a single executor is so much easier since there’s no coordination needed with anyone else. Some people may think having co-executors is a good idea, but I for one am grateful I didn’t have to try to coordinate the numerous in-person meetings I had to take with somebody else’s schedule.
Milestone 1: Reporting Phase Complete
When somebody dies, you have to tell institutions about it. The funeral home (if you use one, we did) did some of this on our behalf — notably the credit bureaus.
The rest, you have to take care of. A death certificate is almost always required as part of this, and here again the funeral home was helpful. A non exhaustive list of people I had to inform included:
- Her retirement home (who refunded the rest of month rent once we cleared out)
- Canada Post (to redirect any mail)
- Quebec Pension Plan (online)
- Her insurance provider (for contents insurance)
- My father’s employer (because she was receiving a small survivor’s pension)
- Her bank (CIBC)
- Her broker (BMO Investorline)
- CRA (to stop benefit payments — GST and Carbon Tax rebates1)2
Reporting a death is not too difficult, but as you can see, even for a simple estate, there are a lot of balls in the air immediately. New email addresses to deal with, forms to fill out, meetings to set up, phone calls to make.
The bulk of this was done in week one.
Milestone 2: Dealing with and distributing funds for named TFSA/RRIF Beneficiaries
With the reporting phase done, the bulk of efforts turned to dealing with BMO Investorline to get access to funds in my mother’s RRIF and TFSA; she had wisely (on the advice of a child of hers) designated beneficiaires for these accounts and hence these funds bypass the entire probate process. It’s something I’ve written about previously.
BMO Investorline punts estates to a dedicated estate department, and this process means you get a dedicated personal case manager3. On paper, this sounds wonderful — an actual person with an actual name and number you can contact! — but in practice it is not a good choice. These individuals seem to handle dozens (hundreds?) of cases simultaneously and getting a hold of one requires setting fixed meetings. I’d prefer to deal with an impersonal, specialized help desk. It would be faster.
There were new forms to fill out indicating the beneficiaries, letters of direction to write to get things moving, signatures of beneficiaries to collect (in ink, no digital signatures4 accepted) — if there are out-of-towners here this can take days/weeks alone.
In my case, 6 weeks after I started working with BMOI, I received a cheque for the amount owed to me as a beneficiary of the RRIF/TFSA. So not lightning fast, but it got done.
Milestone 3: Filing Probate
I decided to DIY this step. I know it’s not the usual (or even recommended5) method, but I really couldn’t stomach the fees being charged for what appeared to be a series of form-filling exercises6. A probated will was needed to access (and trade) funds in the non-registered account which continued to fluctuate in price, pay dividends, and generally putter along without any involvement (or any visibility) on my part.
There’s a few steps that need doing before you can file the paperwork
- You need to know the exact size of the estate, which in our case meant
- selling some jewellery, coins and whatnot
- requesting a statement from BMO Investorline for asset value on date of death
- Once you know the size of the estate, calculating the probate taxes7 is straightforward using their handy-dandy calculator
- Figuring out how to pay those probate taxes is another step. In my case, a letter of direction asking for a partial liquidation of non-registered funds8 and waiting a few weeks was enough for BMO Investorline to send me a cheque made out to the Minister of Finance9
- Then there is the form filling. The information requested isn’t difficult, but understanding what forms are required probably took several hours of reading to make sure I had it right10.
- The logistics of notarizing and serving the required forms was an interesting challenge, but a roving notary11 who made house calls made things much easier. Recommended!
- After serving the required form to the beneficiaries, you are obligated to wait 30 days in case there are any legal challenges.
Getting all the way to the point where I was ready to make the trip downtown to the courthouse took about 2 months after the funeral. I was still working full time at this point, so I’m sure it could’ve been done faster.
Milestone 4: Opening Estate Accounts
Estate accounts are required in order for you to deposit any cheques made out to the deceased or the Estate of the Deceased. But oh boy, was this a total PITA.
I started the process with CIBC about 2 weeks after the funeral, at the same meeting where I canceled my mother’s credit card. As mentioned previously, at CIBC, branch employees seem to have very limited familiarity with how estate accounts work and rely on a for-employees-only call centre for help. I would from time to time get weird (and to me, unrelated) questions from the branch about how much money might end up in the account (no idea), when probate would be achieved (again, no idea) and so on. It was an altogether infuriating experience. In the end, when the account was opened (and I can’t make this stuff up), I was handed a Post-It note with the account number scrawled on it. That was it.
This process took 6 weeks from the funeral, which to me is unbelievable. I had expected this to be done during the initial meeting I had with the branch. Perhaps I just got unlucky, no idea. But this was easily among the more painful things I had to endure.
I also did the same with BMO Investorline without really being sure I needed to (in the end, I did). The BMO Investorline process was by comparison reasonably easy, except I had to fill in a bunch of forms as though I was a brand new client which felt rather repetitive. And they were generic forms, so they asked inappropriate-for-an-estate kinds of information, like net worth, annual income, etc etc.
Milestone 5: Regular tax return
My mother died in the first quarter of 2024, which meant her 2023 taxes still needed to be prepared and submitted at the usual deadlines. I’ve been preparing my parents’ taxes for many years at this point, so it wasn’t a big deal, but the additional work came at a not-ideal time. The tax return was filed prior to the April deadline, about a month after the funeral.
Milestone 6: Probate Granted
Once the probate papers are filed at the courthouse, it’s a waiting game with no transparency whatsoever. The clerk at the courthouse estimated it would take six weeks. It actually took five!
Given all the work required to file probate, the actual granting of it is underwhelming. A regular mail containing my mother’s will and form 74C, now embossed with the seal of something or other. No cover letter, nothing else. No Post-It notes, though.
Milestone 7: Filing the Estate Information Return
This is basically a document that lists all the assets that went into the calculation of the probate taxes. And the estate trustee (the person to whom probate is granted) must file this within 180 days after being declared the trustee. In theory, this document could show that you still owe additional taxes, but I was careful during the filing of Probate that all the estate value was accounted for.
This took a few hours online using the Province’s website.
Milestone 8: Reestablishing access to the non-registered funds
All this time, I had no access and no visibility as to what was going on in the non-registered account. After providing proof of probate to BMO Investorline, things moved reasonably quickly and I regained online access to the account. Actually, strictly speaking, I gained online access to the newly created Estate account (new account number, and named The Estate of) , and the first transactions I saw were transfers from the account owned by my mother.
This milestone was achieved about four months after the funeral, or about 2 weeks after being granted probate.
Milestone 9: Preserving the value of the non-registered funds
Up until now, the non-registered account was invested in equities, bonds, some in HISA — not an appropriate level of risk for an account that would be liquidated in the coming months. In the end, this account ended up generating income, but given the level of equities in it, it could have just as easily gone south in the time that had elapsed between the funeral and me regaining access.
And so I immediately sold off all assets and plopped them into USD and CAD HISAs, not cash; no need to let the money sit idle at this point.
That took about 90 seconds 🙂
Milestone 10: First distribution of some non-registered funds
I had a pretty good idea of how much tax would be owing on the final return/estate return, and I could see that the non-registered account had more than enough funds to cover those taxes. And so, I initiated a preliminary distribution of some of the non-registered funds to the beneficiaries.
To do this, I had to convince BMO Investorline to send me cheques, which they eventually did. This meant I could write cheques against cash in the non-registered estate account.
This happened about 5 months after the funeral.
Milestone 11: Conversion to all-cash
My mother died in the first quarter of 2024. Her final return and estate return would therefore be due in 2025. I wanted the estate to be done with generating income in 2024; otherwise, I would have had to file ANOTHER estate return for FY25. And so, in late November, I sold all of the HISAs and left cash in the non-registered account, a situation that pained me greatly.
This took place about 8 months after the funeral, and so I earned HISA interest on the holdings for 4 months to the benefit of all the beneficiaries.
Milestone 12: Filing final return, estate return
I ended up hiring an accountant to do this last bit of paperwork. After reviewing what they did, I realized in hindsight that this was a task well within my capabilities, but the CRA website made it seem way more complicated than it actually was.
In any case, there were two wrinkles involved in preparing the returns, both involving BMO/BMOI. In one case, their HISA unit clearly didn’t talk to their Investorline unit, and they sent T slips to my mother’s former address. I filed a formal complaint about that.
The second issue involved a missing RC249 form which captures the decline in value of a RRIF between day of death and day of liquidation. After some back and forth, BMOI came up with the goods.
At this point, I wrote cheques out to the CRA for the final and estate returns. I was happy that I estimated these pretty precisely.
The final and estate returns were filed in April 202512, about 13 months after the funeral.
Milestone 13: Notice of Assessment for final return
This was received in May 2025, so reasonably quickly after filing it. We’re now at 14 months after the funeral.
Milestone 14: Notice of Assessment for estate return
The CRA really is a dysfunctional organization. Their SLA for processing the estate return is 17 weeks per their website. And that clock doesn’t start until the Final Return Notice of Assessment is complete. I finally got this (and even here, they managed to lose at least one notification letter) in late December 2025. This puts us at 21 months after the funeral.
Milestone 15: Clearance Certificate
The Clearance Certificate (TX19) has an SLA of 120 calendar days. And you should not start this process until the Estate Return has been processed. Everything involving CRA is a serial process, there’s no shortcuts.
Anyway, this is something the accountant did as part of their service. I actually got them to file it before I had hands on the paper copy of the Estate Return Notice of Assessment because I knew that the Estate Return was complete (they mailed the estate a cheque).
CRA, predictably, did not exceed expectations. 120 days after they received the Clearance Certificate application, I got confirmation in the mail. This put us in February 2026, 23 months after the funeral.
Milestone 16: Final distribution and closure of estate accounts
This took a day — checking my math, writing and mailing cheques, sending eTransfers. I had to wait a week for an appointment to close the CIBC estate account (and since no online access, I didn’t really know what the value of it was). I haven’t yet closed the BMO Investorline account because I want to wait until the final final statement is available (I was told by their agents that I would not be able to get access to account statements if I closed the account immediately). But that will be one phone call in mid-March.
Final Thoughts
The process is lengthy but most of the delays are CRA-related. CRA easily added a year to the overall process due to their glacial processing. I’m really not sure I could have come to the finish line much faster.
So executors, a great deal of patience and a superhuman ability to remain on hold without losing your mind is required.
And for beneficiaries, don’t expect payouts very quickly!
I’ll share some specific suggestions on how to set up your estate in order to be kind to your executor in a future post.
The Money Engineer 