What to Do After You've Written Your Will in Canada

A 52-year-old Hamilton accountant signs his will on a Tuesday afternoon in a downtown lawyer's office, walks out with a tidy folder labelled "Estate Documents", and puts it on the bookshelf in his home office. Eight years pass. His marriage ends. He files no new will and updates no beneficiary designations. Six months after the divorce his RRSP — which still lists his ex-wife as beneficiary — is worth $340,000. He dies of a heart attack on a Sunday morning. Under most provincial statutes, the will's gift to his ex-wife is treated as if she predeceased him. But the RRSP beneficiary designation is filed with the bank, not with the court, and the bank pays the RRSP directly to the ex-wife regardless of what the will says.

That gap — the will being current but the surrounding paperwork being stale — is the most common post-signing failure in Canadian estates. The will is a structural document. The estate plan is a collection of documents, designations, and storage decisions that have to be kept in alignment with the will. Signing the will is the start of that maintenance, not the end.

This guide walks through the seven post-signing steps in the order they should happen.

Step 1 — Store the original safely (and tell the executor) #

The will only works if it can be found. Probate courts in Canadian common-law provinces require the original signed will, not a copy.^[1] A lost original creates a major and sometimes unsolvable problem.

Three storage options dominate in Canada:

• With the drafting lawyer. Most Canadian estate lawyers offer to retain the original in their firm's vault at no additional charge. They issue a receipt and the firm's records list you as a client whose will is on file. This is the lowest-friction option.
• A fireproof home safe. Cheap, accessible, but the safe combination needs to be known to the executor.
• A bank safe-deposit box. Secure, but access can be complicated after death — banks generally require the executor to produce the death certificate and probate authority, and the box is sometimes sealed pending court process. Practical tip — never put the only copy of the will in a safe-deposit box in the deceased's sole name.

Whichever choice you make, the executor needs to know — in clear, written terms — where the will is and how to retrieve it.

Step 2 — Register the will (where applicable) #

A few Canadian jurisdictions operate provincial will-notice registries that record the existence and location of a will, not its contents:

• British Columbia. The Wills Notice service through Vital Statistics is a long-standing system. Filing fee is $17 per notice. After death, the executor (or family) searches the registry to find the most recent registered notice.^[3]
• Manitoba. The Wills Registry is operated by the Vital Statistics Agency. Similar model.

Other Canadian provinces do not currently operate active provincial registries. Private commercial registries exist (NoticeConnect Wills Registry is the most prominent in Ontario) and can be useful but are not government services.

If you live elsewhere, the registry options exist but matter less than the storage and notification steps.

Step 3 — Align beneficiary designations #

This is the step that most often goes wrong. Several Canadian financial products use beneficiary designations that pay directly to the named beneficiary, bypassing the will:

• RRSPs and RRIFs. Designation filed with the financial institution.
• TFSAs. "Successor holder" (spouse only) or "beneficiary" designation, depending on province and product.
• Life insurance. Designation filed with the insurance company.
• Pension plans. Each plan has its own designation process.
• Segregated funds and many annuity products. Insurance-company-administered beneficiary designation.

The will does not control any of these unless the named beneficiary is "Estate" or the designation is silent. A will that says "I leave my RRSP to my partner Sarah" does nothing if the bank has Sarah's mother on file as the named beneficiary — the bank pays Sarah's mother.

The post-signing pass — log into every registered account, every insurance policy, and every pension portal. Check the named beneficiary. If it doesn't match the estate plan in the new will, update it. Some institutions still require a paper form mailed in; others allow online updates. Keep written confirmation of every update.

A common alignment pattern — name a spouse or partner as primary beneficiary on registered accounts (qualifies for the rollover under section 70 of the Income Tax Act and avoids probate)^[4], and name "the Estate" as the contingent beneficiary in case the primary predeceases.^[5]

Step 4 — Powers of attorney and personal-care documents #

A complete Canadian estate plan is rarely just the will. Two ancillary documents address what happens during incapacity rather than at death:

• Power of attorney for property (called "Continuing Power of Attorney for Property" in Ontario, "Enduring Power of Attorney" in most other provinces). Names someone to manage finances if you lose mental capacity.
• Power of attorney for personal care (called "Power of Attorney for Personal Care" in Ontario, "Representation Agreement" in BC, "Personal Directive" in Alberta). Names someone to make health and personal-care decisions if you lose capacity.

If your lawyer drafted these at the same time as the will, store them with the will. The executor or substitute decision-maker needs to find them. If you haven't drafted these yet, doing so within a month or two of the will is the common pattern — they round out the estate plan.

Step 5 — Tell the executor (and document the practicalities) #

The executor administers what they know about. A will sitting in a fireproof safe with no inventory of accounts produces an executor who spends six months reconstructing where assets are.

The fix is a separate document — sometimes called a "letter of instruction," sometimes a "life inventory," sometimes a "discovery document" — that lists what the executor will need:

• Financial institutions, with account numbers and approximate balances
• Outstanding debts (mortgage, credit cards, student loans, lines of credit)
• Life insurance policies and policy numbers
• Pension and employer benefit contacts
• Real estate, with title information
• Vehicle registrations
• Digital accounts that need handling (email, social media, photo storage, password manager)
• Subscriptions to cancel
• Funeral wishes
• Contact information for accountant, financial advisor, lawyer

This document is not the will. It lives outside the will (because it contains private information that doesn't belong in the public probate record) and gets updated as accounts and balances change. Tell the executor where it is.

Step 6 — Communicate with beneficiaries (selectively) #

Whether to share the will's contents with beneficiaries is a judgment call. Two extremes both produce problems.

Total secrecy sometimes produces shocked, hurt beneficiaries during grief — a child who learns at the funeral that the family business was left to a sibling, a partner who learns from a lawyer that the inheritance they expected went elsewhere. Surprises during grief tend to escalate into disputes.

Total disclosure sometimes produces premature conflict during the testator's lifetime — children competing for distributions while you're still alive, awkward family dinners.

The middle path most Canadian families settle on:

• The executor is told. They know they are the executor, they know where the will is, and they have at least a high-level sense of the structure (any specific gifts, the major beneficiaries).
• Primary beneficiaries are told the general structure. "You and your sister are the main beneficiaries; the residue is split equally; here's why this small specific gift goes to your cousin." Reasoning shared in advance is conflict avoided later.
• Specific dollar figures or asset valuations are usually not shared. They change. Anchoring beneficiaries to a number creates expectations that may not match reality.

This is your call. The right balance depends on family dynamics.

Step 7 — Set a review cadence #

The will is a snapshot of intentions at a moment. Life moves; the will needs to keep up. The reviewable events:

• Marriage (historically, marriage revoked a prior will in most provinces; several have since abolished that rule — BC in 2014, Alberta in 2012, Ontario in 2022 — while some others still retain it)
• Separation or divorce (voids gifts to a former spouse under many provincial statutes)
• Birth or adoption of a child
• Death of a named beneficiary or executor
• Material change in assets — buying a home, receiving an inheritance, selling a business
• Moving to a different province (provincial law governs)
• Significant change in relationship status (a common-law partner becoming financially intertwined)

In the absence of any of these, a quiet review every three to five years is the common cadence. The review usually ends with "no changes needed." When a change is needed, a codicil (a short amending document) can handle small adjustments; a full new will is the right tool for substantial restructuring. See our codicil article for the choice.

A practical scheduling tactic — pair the will review with another annual or biennial habit. Some Canadians review the will when they file taxes. Others review it on their birthday. The specific trigger matters less than the existence of one.

A note on the digital footprint #

A modern Canadian estate now usually includes meaningful digital assets — email accounts with years of correspondence, photo libraries on cloud services, social media accounts, online banking and brokerage portals, cryptocurrency, password managers, subscription services. The will should give the executor general authority to access these; the practical credentials belong in the separate executor-facing document, not in the will itself (which becomes public after probate).

See our piece on cryptocurrency in your will for the specific case of cryptographic access, and the upcoming digital assets article for the broader category.

What we focus on at It's Simple Will #

The It's Simple Will product produces both the will and a separate executor-facing document — the practical inventory the executor will actually need. The two documents are deliberately split. The will is the legally binding skeleton; the inventory is the operational manual.

After signing, the questionnaire prompts you to schedule a review and walks through the beneficiary-designation alignment step explicitly — the most common post-signing failure mode in Canadian estates. The pillar on how to write a will in Canada covers the will-drafting decisions in detail; the how often to update your will article focuses specifically on the review cadence.

Start a will at app.itssimplewill.ca. If you already have a will from elsewhere and want to use our executor-facing document on its own, that path is also available.