Deciding what to do with the family home or cottage can be tough. Here's what you need to consider:
Trustee Selling Property: Unless your will says otherwise, the estate trustee will likely
have to sell the property and invest the money. That’s because an estate trustee has a
duty to convert non-income-producing assets, especially real estate properties, into
income-producing assets.
14.0 Dealing with Family Property
Minor Children: If you have minor children, think about whether the person making
decisions for them (i.e., the one with decision-making responsibility) should be able to
use the family home. You’ll also want to think about whether your minor children can sell
the house or ask the one with decision-making responsibility to leave the home once
they all become adults.
Gifting Multiple Children: If you're leaving the home to multiple children, you need to
decide how they'll share it. They can have equal shares (either as tenants-in-common or
joint tenants) or unequal shares (as tenants-in-common). If the will doesn’t say how the
home will be shared, then the children will have to share it as tenants-in-common.
If you choose joint tenancy, know that any child can break the joint
tenancy later on without needing consent from the other joint tenants. If
a joint tenancy is broken, then the owners’ ownership status will change
to tenants-in-common.
It could be helpful for the children to sign a co-tenancy agreement in
which they agree on how they can sell or transfer their share of the
property. You may decide to mention this agreement in your will as
either a suggestion or as a requirement for your children to sign before
getting the property.
A joint tenant can unilaterally break a joint tenancy
(otherwise known as, “sever a joint tenancy”) in two ways.
They can either:
Transfer their share to someone else; or
1.
Transfer it to themselves.
2.
Either option involves registering a new transfer using
Teraview. Once that transfer is registered, it automatically
breaks up the joint tenancy. After that, the property
owners don't hold the property as joint tenants anymore -
instead, they become what we call "tenants in common."
17
Lesson 1 – Preparing a Will