Wills and estate planning, made in Canada
Your will, built on your province's own rules.
Estate law is provincial, and the differences are not small. EstateCanvas asks you the questions your province actually requires, drafts your will against its legislation, and shows you the whole document before you pay a cent.
- $15 per will until October 31, 2026
- You read it before you pay
- Updates free, forever
What you get
- Last will and testament
- Powers of attorney
- Signing instructions for your province
- Your estate record
What this normally costs
A lawyer charges $400–$1,200 for a simple will.
For a straightforward estate, you are paying for typing. The law does not require a lawyer to draft or witness your will in Ontario, British Columbia or Alberta — what makes a will valid is that it is written, signed and witnessed correctly.
There are real situations where you should see a lawyer anyway, and we would rather tell you than take your money.See the full list
How it works
Four steps, and you only pay at step three.
The order matters. Most platforms take payment before you have seen anything. We think you should read the document you are buying.
Tell us about you and your family
Marital status, children, pets, where you live. Your answers decide which questions come next — no one is asked about guardians for children they do not have.
About 20 minutes end to end. You can stop and come back.
Map out your estate
Property, savings, investments, vehicles, keepsakes, digital accounts — and the debts against them. Assign specific gifts, then split the remainder by percentage among the people and charities you choose.
We check that your percentages add to 100 and that every beneficiary has a fallback.
Read your finished will, then decide
We generate the whole document and show it to you. Every clause, in plain formatting, before any payment. If something is wrong, go back and change it. If it is right, pay and download.
$15 until October 31, 2026. Nothing is charged before this point.
Sign it correctly — that is the part people get wrong
More wills fail on signing than on drafting. You get instructions written for your province: how many witnesses, how old they must be, who is disqualified, and whether your province allows any of it to happen over video.
Then keep your estate record up to date. Updates are always free.
Step three is the whole idea
You will have answered forty-odd questions by this point. Before any money changes hands, we turn those answers into the finished will and put it in front of you — the executor appointment, the residue split, the guardianship clause, the survivorship wording, all of it.
Read it. If a clause is not what you meant, go back and fix it. The document regenerates. Only when you say it is right do we ask for $15.
Walk through all four stepsThe part nobody else does
A will is a document. An estate is a moving target.
You buy a house, close an account, have another child, change your mind about your executor. EstateCanvas is built to be the place that record lives — not a PDF you generated once in 2026 and forgot.
Assets, with what they are worth
Real estate, vehicles, investments, personal property, digital accounts — each with a fair market value, a location and notes. Reused across every plan in your account.
Liabilities
Mortgages, loans, credit cards and other debts, so your executor sees the net picture rather than guessing at it.
Documents, attached to the right thing
Upload a deed, a policy or a statement and attach it to the asset it belongs to. Tag it. Your executor will not have to hunt.
People, with the roles they hold
One contact list across your whole account. Each person carries their roles — executor, trustee, guardian, witness, beneficiary, attorney — so you never retype an address.
Shared spaces
Invite a spouse, an adult child or your lawyer into a plan as owner, admin, lawyer or viewer. They get their own access instead of a forwarded PDF.
Reviews and a read-only executor share
We remind you when your plan is due a look, and you can hand your executor a read-only view of what they need without giving up your account.
Your executor will thank you for this far more than for the will itself.
How the estate record worksWhere we're live
Built for all of Canada. Live in three provinces, properly.
Estate law is provincial, so we launch a province only when its own rules engine, documents and signing instructions are done — not by relabelling another province's paperwork.
Live now
Full support: province-specific questionnaire, documents and signing instructions, checked against each province's own legislation.
Rest of Canada
- Saskatchewan
- Manitoba
- Québec
- New Brunswick
- Nova Scotia
- Prince Edward Island
- Newfoundland & Labrador
- Yukon
- Northwest Territories
- Nunavut
We add a province only when its rules engine is done properly — not by relabelling another province's documents. More of Canada is coming.
The differences are real
What changes when you cross a provincial border.
Each figure below comes from that province's own legislation, and each one changes what your will has to say and how you have to sign it.
Governed by the Succession Law Reform Act, RSO 1990, c S.26
- Minimum age to make a will
- 18
- Witnesses required
- 2, aged 18+
- Handwritten will valid?
- Yes
- Electronic will valid?
- Yes
- Spouse's preferential share
- $350,000
- Estate Administration Tax
- $15 per $1,000 (1.5%) of the value above $50,000
- Common-law partner inherits automatically?
- No
Ontario's probate tax is the reason to plan
Ontario charges 1.5% on everything above $50,000, with no upper cap. On an $800,000 estate that is $11,250 — more than twenty times what the same estate would pay in Alberta. Naming beneficiaries directly on registered accounts and insurance, and holding property jointly where it makes sense, can lawfully reduce what passes through probate.
Everything about wills in OntarioGoverned by the Wills, Estates and Succession Act, SBC 2009, c 13
- Minimum age to make a will
- 16
- Witnesses required
- 2, aged 19+
- Handwritten will valid?
- No
- Electronic will valid?
- Yes
- Spouse's preferential share
- $300,000
- Probate fees
- $14 per $1,000 (1.4%) of the value above $50,000
- Common-law partner inherits automatically?
- Yes
In BC, a will can be rewritten by a judge
WESA section 60 lets a spouse or child apply to court to vary a will that does not make adequate provision for them — and BC courts use it. This is the strongest wills-variation regime in Canada, and it means disinheriting a spouse or an adult child in BC is genuinely difficult. If you plan to leave someone out, or to divide your estate very unevenly among your children, get legal advice before you sign.
Everything about wills in British ColumbiaGoverned by the Wills and Succession Act, SA 2010, c W-12.2
- Minimum age to make a will
- 18
- Witnesses required
- 2, aged 18+
- Handwritten will valid?
- Yes
- Electronic will valid?
- No
- Spouse's preferential share
- $150,000
- Surrogate court fees
- Capped at $525
- Common-law partner inherits automatically?
- Yes
Cheap to probate, but no electronic shortcuts
Alberta caps surrogate fees at $525, so probate cost is rarely a reason to plan around here — the reasons are guardianship, the adult interdependent partner rules, and family maintenance claims. The trade-off is formality: Alberta has not followed BC and Ontario on electronic or remote witnessing, so your will has to be signed on paper with two witnesses in the room with you.
Everything about wills in AlbertaFigures last reviewed 4 August 2026 against the legislation cited on each province page. Sources are listed there in full.
Pricing
$15 a will, and nothing held back for a higher tier.
Both major Canadian competitors put powers of attorney behind a $199 plan. Ours are in the price, because a will alone does not help anyone while you are still alive.
One will, one price
$29$15per will
Promotional price until October 31, 2026. Then $29. Nothing is charged until you have read your finished will and approved it.
Start your willNo card required to start · Free updates for life
Everything is included
- A complete last will and testament, drafted to your province's rules
- Province-specific signing and witnessing instructions
- Executors, backup executors, guardians and pet guardians
- Specific gifts and percentage-based residue allocation
- Funeral, burial and final-wishes instructions
- Your estate record: assets, liabilities and uploaded documents
- Read-only sharing with your executor
- Free updates and re-downloads whenever life changes
There is no higher tier. Powers of attorney are not an upsell — they are part of the price.
Want the honest side-by-side, including where the competition beats us?Read the comparisons
Learn centre
Understand it before you sign it.
Plain-language guides to Canadian estate law, with the statute cited for every claim and a date on every page.
Wills, explained
What a will does, what makes it valid, and what happens without one.
Probate and taxes
Ontario's 1.5% estate administration tax, BC's fees, Alberta's $525 cap.
Executors
Choosing one, what the job actually involves, and what they cannot do.
Guardians and pets
Naming a guardian for minor children, and providing for animals.
Ontario probate calculator
Work out the estate administration tax on any estate value.
Will checklist
Everything to have to hand before you start. Takes five minutes to gather.
Questions
The things people ask first.
More in support and FAQs, or thelearn centre.
Is a will made online legally valid in Canada?
Yes. Nothing in Ontario, British Columbia or Alberta law requires a will to be drafted by a lawyer. What makes a will valid is that it is in writing, signed by you, and witnessed according to your province's rules. A will made on EstateCanvas and signed correctly is as legally valid as one drafted in a law office. The full answer, with the statutes.
When do I pay?
After you approve your will, not before. You answer the questions, we generate your complete will, you read every clause of it — and only then do we ask for payment. If it is not right, you have not spent anything. The price is $29, and $15 until October 31, 2026.
Which provinces can I use EstateCanvas in?
Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. Each has its own rules engine, its own document templates and its own signing instructions — we would rather serve three provinces properly than ten approximately. If you live elsewhere in Canada, Willful and Epilogue both cover more ground today, and we say so on our comparison pages.
What happens if I die without a will?
Your province's intestacy rules decide who gets what, and they may not match what you would have wanted. In Ontario your married spouse takes the first $350,000 and a common-law partner inherits nothing automatically. In British Columbia a partner of two years counts as a spouse. In Alberta an adult interdependent partner has full spousal rights. The court also appoints your estate administrator rather than you naming an executor. What intestacy looks like in each province.
Do I need a lawyer instead?
Sometimes, and we will tell you when. If you own a business or foreign property, want a trust, are in a blended family with competing claims, or plan to leave a spouse or adult child out of your will, see a lawyer — those are the cases where a questionnaire is the wrong tool. Our honest comparison of online wills and lawyers lists all of them.
Can I change my will later?
Yes, free, as many times as you like. Sign in, change what needs changing, and download the new version. You then sign and witness the new will the same way, and it replaces the old one. Most wills go out of date because updating them costs money — that is a problem we would rather not have.
Can my spouse and I make one joint will?
No — in Canada each person needs their own will. What couples usually want is a pair of mirror wills that reflect each other. You can each make one on EstateCanvas, and share a space so you can see both plans in one place.
What is the estate record, and why would I keep using this after my will is done?
Because a will on its own does not tell your executor where anything is. The estate record is where you keep the rest: your assets and what they are worth, your debts, scanned documents attached to the things they relate to, and the people involved with the role each one plays. You can share it read-only with your executor. How the estate record works.
Start your will. Pay when you approve it.
Answer the questions, read your finished will, then decide. $15 until October 31, 2026 — $29 after that.