When to update your will (and what happens if you don't)

A will is a snapshot. Your life is not. The gap between the two is where the worst estate outcomes live — not people without wills, but people with wills that describe a life they no longer have.

Events that should trigger a review, same week

Separation and divorce. The provinces handle this differently and none of them handles it completely. In Ontario, divorce (and, since 2022, separation in defined circumstances) revokes gifts and appointments in favour of the former spouse — but the rest of the will stands, which can leave gaps. In BC, ending a marriage or a marriage-like relationship revokes gifts to the former spouse. Do not rely on the default: rewrite.

Marriage or a new common-law relationship. Marriage no longer revokes a will in any of our three provinces (Ontario changed in 2022, BC in 2014, Alberta in 2012) — which means your old will, leaving everything to someone else, remains fully valid. A new spouse who is not in your will has to litigate. Update it.

A child is born or adopted. Guardianship, trustee arrangements, ages of inheritance — none of it exists in a will written before children.

A named person dies or becomes incapable. Executor, guardian, a major beneficiary. If your will has no backup for that role, it now has a hole.

You buy real estate, start a business, or move provinces. A move matters more than people think: your will’s validity usually travels, but its fit does not — witness rules, spousal rights, probate planning and incapacity documents are all provincial. Moving from Ontario to BC puts you under a wills-variation regime that can rewrite your will; that deserves a review.

The quiet drift

Even with no headline event, things drift: the RESP grew, the mortgage shrank, your sister moved abroad, the charity you loved wound down. A review every three years catches drift. It takes fifteen minutes when nothing has changed — and it is the fifteen minutes that keeps the document true.

Codicil or new will?

A codicil is a witnessed amendment to an existing will. It made sense when retyping a document meant a typist. It makes almost none now: a codicil is a second document to store, find, and read together with the first, and a fertile source of ambiguity. Regenerate the whole will instead — it costs nothing and there is exactly one document to probate.