Annual Estate Planning Checklist for Canadians

Last updated July 3, 2026 · 6 min read
Quick answer
Once a year, walk through six things: confirm the executor and guardians are still the right choices, pull beneficiary statements from every registered account and insurance policy, verify the will reflects current family and assets, refresh the Life Discovery Kit (account list, passwords, key documents), check your TFSA and RRSP contribution room with the CRA, and re-test your funeral and powers-of-attorney wishes. The whole pass takes about two hours.

Most Canadian estate plans do not fail because they were wrong when written — they fail because nothing was updated for fifteen years while the family, the assets, and the institutions all changed underneath them. The lawyer's office remembers the original signing. The client remembers the meeting. Neither party gets a calendar reminder five years later when a beneficiary dies or a TFSA gets opened.

A once-a-year sit-down — about two hours, usually on the same evening every year — is the only realistic defence against this drift. This is the checklist we recommend running every year, broken into the six things actually worth looking at.

1. Confirm the people: executor, alternate, guardians

Start with the human appointments in your will. Read the executor and alternate-executor clauses aloud. Three questions for each name:

  • Is the person still alive and in reasonable health?
  • Is the person still in a relationship with you that makes them appropriate (still trusted, still capable, still nearby enough to act)?
  • Are they still likely to outlive you by a reasonable margin?

The same questions apply to guardian appointments for minor children, with one addition — your kids' lives have likely changed. A guardian named when the kids were 2 may make less sense when they are 15. Step-parents, new partners, and adult siblings sometimes become more appropriate candidates over time.

If any answer raises a flag, the fix depends on the size of the change. A change of alternate executor often warrants a codicil (a short witnessed amendment). A change of primary executor, primary guardian, or major beneficiary usually warrants a full new will, which revokes the prior one.

2. Pull beneficiary statements from every institution

This is the single most important step and the one most people skip. Registered accounts with a named beneficiary generally pass directly to that person, outside the will.[3] Life insurance generally works the same way under provincial insurance law — the insurer pays whoever is named on the policy, regardless of what the will says.

Pull current statements from:

  • RRSPs and RRIFs (banks, credit unions, brokerages)
  • TFSAs — including a check of whether your spouse is named successor holder vs beneficiary[4]
  • Locked-in retirement accounts (LIRA, LIF) from former employers
  • Workplace pensions — defined-benefit and defined-contribution
  • Life insurance (both individual and group)
  • Segregated funds (the insurance wrapper around mutual funds)
  • Stock-option plans, employee share plans, profit-sharing plans
  • Annuities

For each, confirm: (a) the person named is still alive, (b) the relationship still makes sense, and (c) the designation is the type you intended (especially successor holder vs beneficiary on TFSAs). If you remarried, separated, or had a beneficiary die, this is the year to update the forms — the institution's form is what controls.

3. Verify the will reflects current assets and family

Read the will from the top, slowly, in light of the past 12 months. Watch for these specific drifts:

  • New family members — a child, grandchild, or step-child born or formally entered the family. Are they named or covered by a class clause ("my children" / "my grandchildren")?
  • Departed family members — a beneficiary, executor, or alternate has died. Has the gift-over or alternate kicked in correctly, or does the will need to be rewritten?
  • New assets — a vacation property, a foreign investment, a business interest. Are these covered by the residue clause or do they need specific treatment?
  • Closed assets — an account or property that was specifically mentioned in the will but no longer exists. Does the rest of the will still make sense without it?
  • Province move — if you have moved provinces in the past year, your will is still generally valid but may interact strangely with the new province's rules (especially on marriage, intestacy, and probate fees).

If none of these have moved, the will is probably still appropriate. If two or more have moved, plan to redo the will rather than patch with a codicil.

4. Refresh the Life Discovery Kit

The Life Discovery Kit is the practical companion to the will — the "treasure map" that tells the executor where everything lives. Unlike the will, which is a public document after probate and should not contain PINs or passwords, the Discovery Kit is private and can contain operational detail.

The annual refresh covers:

  • Account list updates — new accounts opened, old ones closed
  • Institution changes — bank or insurer mergers, account renumberings
  • Document locations — where the original will lives, where the deed and title lie, where backup tax records sit
  • Digital access — password manager master password recovery instructions, two-factor recovery codes, named legacy contacts on Apple, Google, Facebook
  • Charitable gift attributions — for each charity named in the will, how the gift should be attributed (own name / in memory of / anonymous) and where past donation receipts are filed
  • Pet care, key contacts, key professional contacts (accountant, financial advisor, family lawyer)

Two hours on this once a year saves an executor weeks of work later.

Log into your CRA My Account and verify:

  • TFSA contribution room — TFSA records from the prior year are typically processed by April of the following year, so this is the best window to check your real room.[1]
  • RRSP deduction limit — shown on the latest Notice of Assessment.
  • First Home Savings Account (FHSA) room and unused carry-forward, if applicable.

These numbers feed back into estate planning because contributions you make this year affect what is inside the registered accounts at death and the tax outcomes for the beneficiaries.

6. Re-test funeral wishes and powers of attorney

The two non-will documents worth a yearly look:

  • Power of Attorney for property / continuing power of attorney — naming the person who handles finances if you lose capacity. Same questions as the executor: still alive, still willing, still appropriate. Particularly important: is the named POA still local enough to actually visit your bank if needed?
  • Power of Attorney for personal care / advance directive / representation agreement / personal directive — naming the person who makes medical decisions. Names vary by province (Ontario advance care directives, BC representation agreements, Alberta personal directives).
  • Funeral wishes — whether burial or cremation, where, ceremony preferences, any pre-arrangements. The Funeral Pre-Planner module captures these in detail and the annual review is a good moment to confirm the named decision-maker still matches the rest of the plan.

When to skip the annual review and trigger an immediate update

The annual cadence is the floor, not the ceiling. Trigger an immediate review — same week as the event — when any of these happen:

  • Marriage, separation, divorce, or a new common-law relationship
  • Birth, adoption, or formal entry of a child into the family
  • Death of a spouse, beneficiary, executor, or guardian
  • Move to a different province
  • Major asset purchase or sale (home, business interest, investment property)
  • Receipt of a substantial inheritance
  • A serious diagnosis affecting capacity or life expectancy

These are the events where the cost of waiting until the next scheduled review is the highest, and where the fix is usually the most straightforward.

For broader context on how Canadian estate plans fit together, see our pillar guide on estate planning in Canada and the cluster articles on naming a beneficiary on your RRSP and TFSA at death.

What we focus on at It's Simple Will

It's Simple Will is built around the assumption that the will and the Life Discovery Kit need to stay in sync over time — not just be correct on the day you signed them. Once a year, the app prompts you to revisit your answers, confirm executors and beneficiaries, and re-export the documents if anything changed. The annual review is the difference between an estate plan that ages gracefully and one that quietly becomes wrong.

The work compounds: every year you do this pass, the next year takes a little less time because you already know where the paperwork lives.

Citations & sources

  1. [1]TFSA contribution room (CRA) — Canada Revenue Agency
  2. [2]MP, DB, RRSP, DPSP, ALDA, TFSA limits and YMPE — Canada Revenue Agency
  3. [3]Doing taxes for someone who died — Beneficiary designations — Canada Revenue Agency
  4. [4]If you are a designated beneficiary of a TFSA — Canada Revenue Agency
  5. [5]What to do when someone dies: Estates and wills — Government of Canada

Frequently asked questions

How often should I review my estate plan in Canada?

A full review once a year plus an event-triggered review after marriage, separation, divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, the death of a beneficiary or executor, a move to a different province, the purchase or sale of a major asset, or any meaningful change in health. The annual review catches the slow drift; the event review catches the abrupt changes.

Do I need a new will every year?

Almost never. Most years the review confirms nothing has changed and the existing will is still appropriate. A new will or a codicil is usually only needed when an executor, guardian, or major beneficiary changes, when assets shift materially, or when you move to a province with different succession rules. A codicil is a short formal amendment witnessed the same way as the original will; a new will revokes the old one entirely.

What about beneficiary designations? Do they need a yearly check?

Yes — this is the most overlooked part of estate planning. RRSPs, RRIFs, TFSAs, pensions, and life insurance generally pass directly to the named beneficiary and bypass the will entirely. If you remarried, separated, or your previously named beneficiary died, the form on file at the bank or insurer is what controls — not anything in your will. Pull a statement from each institution yearly and confirm the names.

How does an annual review interact with the Life Discovery Kit?

The Life Discovery Kit captures where the assets live and how the executor finds them — bank account numbers, mortgage holder, digital accounts, physical document locations, charitable-gift instructions. The Will captures who gets what. The annual review touches both: confirm the will reflects current intentions, then update the Discovery Kit to reflect any account closures, new institutions, password changes, or moved documents.

Should I tell my executor about the annual review?

Yes — at minimum, the executor should know they have been named, where the original will is stored, and where the Life Discovery Kit lives. The annual review is a natural moment to confirm the executor is still willing to act, still alive, still in good health, and still in a position to handle the role. Surprise executors are a leading cause of estate-administration friction.

What if my circumstances have not changed at all this year?

Still do the pass. The point is to confirm nothing has changed, not to assume nothing has changed. Financial institutions periodically convert account types, switch beneficiary forms when products are migrated, and lose records during mergers. Verifying once a year that the designations still read as expected is the cheap insurance.

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