Stepdaughter of Ontario man will inherit his RRSP after judge validates faulty beneficiary designation form
March 14, 2024
In The Estate of William Harper, the Ontario Superior Court determined that the stepdaughter of an Ontario man will receive the balance of his RRSP, validating an incomplete beneficiary designation form that named her as the beneficiary rather than his estate.
The original beneficiary designation form for the RRSP named the deceased’s estate as the beneficiary, but he executed a new form designating his stepdaughter (Forsyth) as his beneficiary in October of 2018. The deceased’s financial advisor received the new form, but only had a copy of the last page of the two-page document. The bank holding the account never received a copy of the new form and therefore did not process a beneficiary change. As a result, all bank records on the deceased’s death indicated that the deceased’s estate was still listed as the RRSP beneficiary. The deceased’s spouse argued that the estate should receive the RRSP, relying, in part, on the fact that a portion of the new form was missing, and the form was therefore too vague to be relied upon.
The court ultimately ruled in Forsyth’s favour, finding that the disputed new form complied with the Succession Law Reform Act. The court also found that the account that the deceased had intended to designate Forsyth as a beneficiary for could be sufficiently ascertained from the partial copy of the form, meaning that the new form was not too vague to be relied upon.
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