The Legal and Personal Aspects of Estate Administration with Susannah Roth

This week, my guest on the podcast is Susannah Roth, a Partner at O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers. Susannah’s practice focuses on multijurisdictional and cross-border estate administration, and she has been recognized in both the 2019 and 2020 editions of The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory as a Leading Practitioner in Estate & Tax Planning (Repeatedly Recommended) and Estate Litigation (Repeatedly Recommended). She is recognized in The Best Lawyers in Canada 2020 in Trusts and Estates, and is also a columnist in The Lawyer’s Daily, published in Canada by LexisNexis, on estate administration, estate planning and cross-border issues.

In today’s interview, Susannah enlightens us all on the role of an estate administrator, the importance of having a will and when to get one, her practice and its clients, and the O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers’ marketing system. She also shares her perspective on the biggest challenges facing estate lawyers these days, and discusses one of her biggest personal challenges – sadly, one that we share – the loss of her partner in life and the impact that has had upon her. Our conversation concludes with Susannah offering her advice for those who are newly widowed, and what financial literacy means to her now. Thoroughly versed in the legal aspects of estate law, and, tragically, all too familiar with its personal impact, Susannah demonstrates her extensive amount of knowledge, wisdom, and true courage in today’s unforgettable episode.

Listen to the Podcast – Download the Transcript

Highlights:

Estate and trust administrators assist executors and trustees to understand what it is that they need to do when they’re administering an estate or trust.
Married spouses are included under the current Ontario legislation, but if you have a common law spouse, they don’t automatically inherit from you.
Susannah’s firm advises everyone to have a will regardless of how young or how old they are.
The loss of Susannah’s husband has impacted her life in many ways, including increasing the level of difficulty in parenting for her, causing her to reevaluate many of her goals, and making her more empathetic with clients who are experiencing the same tragedy in their lives.
Currently, her definition of financial independence is having the financial ability to pay for all of the expenses that she has, to save for the future, to have a little bit of fun, and to be able to take care of her son and to be able to provide for his future.

Quotes:

“If you don’t make a will, then what happens when you then pass away, is that the legislation in the province that you live in, will dictate who inherits your assets.”

“But to have at least a simple set of legal documents. Yeah, I think as soon as you own anything if you’re over the age of 18, you should definitely do that.”

“I think that a lot of people maybe don’t understand how that can be valuable, and paying for the appropriate advice is sort of like insurance in that sense.”

“If doing a thing, making this decision, either for or against, like, doing the thing or not doing the thing, makes you feel like you’re going to vomit, then it’s wrong, it’s not the right time to make the decision, you’re not ready for it, or it’s not the right decision.”

“I think because it is obviously…such a significant life event, it’s a good idea to look at your will and your powers of attorney when your spouse passes away.”