Moving provinces: what happens to your will

Half a million Canadians move between provinces in a typical year, and almost none of them think about their wills. Mostly they get away with it. Here is what actually changes at the border.

Validity usually travels

All three provinces have conflict-of-laws rules recognising a will that was formally valid where it was made (or where you were domiciled at the time). An Ontario will witnessed under Ontario’s rules does not become invalid when you move to Calgary. So the panic version — “my will is void because I moved” — is generally wrong.

The narrow exception worth knowing: a holograph will made validly in Alberta or Ontario is honoured by BC’s recognition rules for movable property, but real estate is governed by the law where the land sits, and unusual formats invite exactly the litigation you were avoiding. If your will is holograph and you move to BC, replace it with a witnessed one.

Fit breaks even when validity holds

The will still works; it just works inside a different legal machine:

Spousal and family claims change. Move to BC and your will becomes variable — a spouse or adult child can ask the court to rewrite it under WESA s 60. An uneven division that was safe in Ontario is contestable in Vancouver. Move from BC and the reverse: protections your family assumed disappear. Common-law rights flip too — three provinces, three answers.

Probate planning changes. An Ontario plan built to minimize 1.5% EAT is solving a problem Alberta does not have (capped at $525); a BC plan meets slightly different fees and thresholds.

Executor friction changes. Your executor is now out-of-province relative to you. Ontario can require a non-resident executor (outside reciprocating jurisdictions) to post a bond; practical friction — house visits, court attendance, banking — grows with distance either way. Reconsider whether your named executor still makes sense.

Ages change. Majority is 18 in Ontario/Alberta, 19 in BC — which shifts when trust-held funds default out and who can witness codicil-era documents.

The mover’s checklist

Within a few months of arriving: regenerate the will under the new province’s rules (free here — change your province and the questionnaire re-runs the new rules engine), redo both incapacity documents, re-check beneficiary designations with any accounts you moved, reconsider the executor, and re-sign with local witnesses. One evening, done properly.