Category: Estate Planning

Executor Timeline: Milestones of Estate Settlement

RobHLeave a comment

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.

  1. Remember those? ↩︎
  2. And to change the address of correspondence to mine. That was probably the hardest thing. I’m not really sure where I went wrong with that. ↩︎
  3. There’s no explicit charge for this at BMO Investorline. I’ve seen some brokers have charges for “estate management” and I can see why. ↩︎
  4. Estate workflows are, for the most part, very analog, even for an online broker like BMO Investorline. Lots of scan and email. Even a fax or two. ↩︎
  5. Especially by lawyers ↩︎
  6. I’m sure there are many horror stories about estates gone to litigation, but I really couldn’t imagine that happening in my case ↩︎
  7. Sorry, “Estate Administration Tax” per the province ↩︎
  8. Knowing what was in the accounts helped somewhat ↩︎
  9. per https://www.ontario.ca/page/estate-administration-tax#section-4 ↩︎
  10. In the end, I needed 74A, 74B, 74C and 74D. ↩︎
  11. In Ottawa, notaryonwheels.ca is an excellent service ↩︎
  12. The due date depends on date of death. ↩︎

Death, Taxes and Estates: Endgame part 1

RobHLeave a comment

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. ↩︎

“My parent has more money than they’ll ever need!”

RobHLeave a comment

Disclaimer: I’m not a tax expert, accountant or lawyer. My only expertise comes from being the financial caregiver to my late parents.

Say you’re the financial caregiver for your parent1. And you have come to the realization that they are going to die with a large estate. Maybe they have a good work pension. Maybe they have sold their principal residence and their monthly expenses would take 86 years to eat through the assets. Maybe they have both.

I’m going to make the assumption that your assessment is sound. That your parent does, in fact, have more money that they will need for what is left of their life2. I’ll go one further and make the assumption that your parent isn’t so keen on leaving a big legacy to the CRA. So what should you look out for?

Asset = part of estate = subject to estate tax

Anything of value (property, stocks/ETFs, GICs, art, furniture, cars, cash) owned by the parent at time of death becomes part of the estate, and is therefore subject to the “estate administration tax3” aka “probate tax”. And this money becomes frozen until the courts grant probate, something that takes months, if not years.

One way to dodge some of this probate tax is to name beneficiaries for TFSAs and RRIFs. Assets inside accounts set up this way will not be subject to the estate administration tax, and will not get tied up in probate court. But do be careful — a RRIF that flows to beneficiaries will still attract the same tax time bomb mentioned below, and this has to be taken into account because in my case, no tax was withheld!

RRIFs are a tax time bomb

Recall that RRIFs4 are just RRSPs in reverse: the RRSP is the growth phase, the RRIF is how you shrink it. And recall that RRSP contributions subtract from your taxable income in the year you make them. Did you think the government was going to let you pay no tax forever on that subtracted income? Of course not. That’s why RRIF income is treated as, you guessed it, income in the hands of the RRIF owner, and is taxed the same way as any income5.

Annual RRIF payments can be as large as the RRIF owner likes. Payments above the minimum6 attract witholding tax, which is normal, if you think about it. Taking out more the minimum can allow for some tax avoidance. Why? Taking a small tax hit for a few years is almost certainly preferable to the big tax bomb that happens when a parent dies with a large RRIF remaining. The parent in this situation will be assumed to have taken the entire RRIF as income on the day of death. If the RRIF is large, then you’ll be dealing with tax at the top rates7. By spreading out the RRIF income over a few tax years, you should be able to make the income small enough to avoid the top tax bracket; otherwise you’re not really saving much of anything. That will take some finessing.

Donate shares from non-registered accounts to charity

If there are ETFs or stocks held in non-registered accounts, the tax treatment of donated shares is quite generous. Not only do you get the charitable credit based on the market value of the donated shares, you avoid any capital gains tax. Larger charities accept stock donations, but if they don’t, you can also make use of a service like Canada Helps.

Give money away

Giving money to a charity generates a tax credit, which is good. Giving money to children, friends, relatives, strangers — also good. Gifts are tax-free for the giver and the recipient. Gifting houses or stocks is less good since doing this results in what CRA calls a “deemed disposition” meaning that CRA treats the gift as though your parent had sold the asset first, attracting the usual capital gains.

Of course, to give money away, you either have to have cash on hand, or you have to take it from the RRIF (where it’s treated as income to the parent who owns the RRIF), or you have to take it from non-registered accounts (where you may have to sell assets and attract capital gains), or you have to take it from the TFSA (which is effectively problem-free, other than you can’t put the money back in the same calendar year).

  1. I’m going to make this article simpler by assuming there’s one parent remaining. ↩︎
  2. Getting this wrong would be catastrophic on so many levels. Take care here. ↩︎
  3. In Ontario estates <$50k pay nothing. After that it’s $15 of tax per $1000. ↩︎
  4. I covered RRIFs over here. ↩︎
  5. Yeah, ok, you can split RRIF income with your spouse and this can help you avoid higher tax brackets. In my case, my spouse and I have RRIFs that are about the same size, and therefore generate about the same annual income. ↩︎
  6. The mimimum is calculated at the start of the year based on the size of the RRIF and the age of the RRIF owner. ↩︎
  7. in Ontario, in 2026, you hit the top rate of 53.53% for income over $258,482 per https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm ↩︎

Death, Taxes and Estates: Part 3

RobH1 Comment

I am not a lawyer, accountant or tax expert. Your situation may be a lot different than mine. Seek professional guidance if needed.

Part 1 of this blog is found here, and Part 2 is here.

I’m in the tax season stage of wrapping up my Mom’s estate, who died a little over a year ago, a year and a bit after my father died.

Current status

I decided to hire a pro to do the Final Return and the Estate Return since I couldn’t figure out the fine details1 of doing an Estate Return. The Final Return (that’s the easy one, it’s just a regular tax return, except you have to inexplicably file it on paper) would have been within my skill set, but the Estate Return (the one that you have to file to deal with any income generated by the estate after death) was new and confusing to me.

I knew I was going to have to pay taxes on both returns, and using the tax calculators referenced here, I had a pretty good idea of what tax was going to be owed. In essence,

  • The Final Return takes the full value of the RRIF on the day of death as income. This will mean a lot of tax if the RRIF is sizable.
  • The Final Return also assumes any non-registered assets are liquidated on the day of death, which in the case of equity holdings, typically attracts capital gains and the associated taxes2.
  • The Estate Return is going to have to pay tax on any dividends, interest, or capital gains realized by the assets in the estate. Here the tax rate is high, because an Estate is treated as a Trust, and trusts don’t get personal deductions, meaning you get taxed on the first dollar of gains you manage.

A few wrinkles

Submitting the necessary paperwork to the accountant was the usual tedium of getting scans of T-slips, charitable donations and the like to the accountant. I did encounter a few problems.

BMO Investorline Problem 1: Sending T-slips to invalid addresses

My Mom’s assets were all held with BMO Investorline. Imagine my surprise when her retirement home let me know that snail mail from BMO (not BMO Investorline) had arrived at the home. I changed the address of all communications with BMOI to me nearly a year ago at that point, so you can imagine I was less than happy about having to drive across town to pick up what turned out to be a T-slip for the HISA I bought in her self-directed account. At that point, I was a few steps away from livid.

After spending some time with hapless agents who could not tell me why the mail ended up at an invalid address, I penned a note to the formal complaint department of BMO. I just figured that if there was some systemic issue at play here, that at least I could help those who followed me.

The complaints department ultimately admitted it was a screwup on their part and offered their apology. Whether or not it will happen to someone in my shoes in the future is unknown to me, but beware.

BMO Investorline Problem 2: Not providing an RC249 slip

The RC249 is a CRA slip that covers the losses incurred by a RRIF post-death.

It makes some sense: as mentioned above, the owner of the RRIF is assumed to get income equal the the value of the RRIF on day of death. But the RRIF assets aren’t automatically liquidated; they remain invested in whatever they were invested in. If that includes stocks/ETFs and the like, then it’s possible for the value of the RRIF to actually decline post-death. And that is what happened in my case. This loss becomes a tax benefit to the estate return, but only if you have an RC249 to prove it.

Now, the RC249 is clearly intended to be filled out by the issuer/carrier of the RRIF, in my case BMOI. And so, you would expect that to be automatically provided, wouldn’t you? Wrong again.

Another set of back and forth, first with the standard BMOI agents, and then the BMOI estate department, eventually produced a valid RC249 that I could send to the accountant.

Paying taxes owed

As much as I disliked the entire process of working with BMOI’s estate department, the one thing I did like about BMOI was that their non-registered accounts can be linked with a bank account (AccountLink) against which cheques can be written3. (This is something I set up months ago to help distribute some assets early to the beneficiaries). So once the accountants informed me of the eye-watering tax bill (which was pretty much aligned with what I expected), I was able to write the cheques and drop them off with little fuss. Thinking about how you will do that is something to consider in dissolving the estate.

Final Return Notice of Assessment

This was received in pretty short order, a few weeks after it was submitted, and the tax bill was correct.

Next steps

I await the Notice of Assessment for the Estate Account, at which point my accountant will be able to apply for a clearance certificate from CRA. This certificate essentially tells me that CRA considers all business with my mom and her estate closed. Once I have this, I can fully distribute all funds from the estate without having the CRA come after me for monies owed. This takes “up to 120 days” per the website.

  1. More accurately: I couldn’t bear spending hours reading arcane text on various CRA websites hoping I didn’t make a mistake ↩︎
  2. Note that unless directed, the liquidation doesn’t ACTUALLY take place. In my case, I moved all assets to HISA accounts once I gained control of the assets via probate, (a delay of a few months) and then liquidated the assets at the end of 2024. This I did to avoid earning any income from the estate holdings in 2025, which would have delayed the estate return. ↩︎
  3. No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince anyone at BMOI/BMO to send me a debit card for the account, which would have allowed me to “Bill Pay” CRA instead of writing cheques. ↩︎