Will and Estate Planning – Lessons from Recent Caselaw: Ritz v Vass (2026 BCSC 382)

What a Kelowna family's court battle can teach you about the importance of a will and good estate planning

Dying intestate means dying without a will. About half of Canadians do. Unfortunately, the consequences of dying without a well-considered and up-to-date will and estate plan can be significant and unpleasant. This is well illustrated by a recent ruling out of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Ritz v Vass (2026 BCSC 382), decided by the BC Supreme Court in January 2026.

Ms. Ritz died in Kelowna in July 2022, leaving behind four properties, two adult children, and no will. Nearly four years later, two of those properties were still unsold, a trial was scheduled for May 2026, and the estate likely spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees and carrying costs that should never have been necessary.

This situation is worth examining not because it involves unusual facts, but because it doesn't. The circumstances are entirely ordinary. The lessons it teaches are not limited to people with multi-million-dollar estates. They are just as relevant to someone whose only asset is their relatively modest manufactured home and only income is their government pension.

The problems it illustrates are ones that estate lawyers see constantly. It is, unfortunately, the kind of situation that solid advice and careful planning likely could have avoided or mitigated.

Who is in charge of your estate when you die without a Will?

Executors are appointed by a will-maker’s will to administer an estate. Their authority comes from the will. Administrators are appointed by a court to administer an estate. This can occur when there is no will or no executor named in the will who is willing, able, and suitable. An administrator's authority comes from a court order.

Both executors and administrators may be generically referred to as “personal representatives” of an estate.

When there's no will, there's no named executor and no binding record of the deceased's intentions. In such circumstances, BC's Wills, Estates and Succession Act (“WESA”) provides a hierarchical list of who may apply to the court to be granted the power to administer the deceased’s estate. Upon such application, the court has the discretionary power to determine whether it is prudent for a given applicant to be granted the power to administer the estate as its personal representative.

WESA also provides a formula for determining who will inherit what proportion of the residue of the deceased’s estate when there is no will.

Exercising control over these two vital decisions (“Who is in charge?” and “Who gets your stuff and how?”), even in very simple circumstances involving uncomplicated family dynamics and modest assets, often becomes a greater priority once one realizes that the control and disposition of one’s estate will be determined by statute (i.e. the government) and the courts if one fails to develop and implement one’s own plan.

In this case, Ms. Ritz died without a will. As a result, that system of statute and court-granted authority was engaged to produce a result that was legally tidy (at the time) and practically disastrous. Both of her children were appointed co-administrators of the estate.

Two cooks in the kitchen. Why does appointing two co-executors set the stage for issues?

Co-executors and co-administrators in BC must act unanimously. Even when there is no disagreement, this can prove to be a bit clunky from an administration perspective. Two people needing to go to every meeting and sign every form can be inefficient, even when they are always on the same page and get along swimmingly.

Worse, when they don’t agree and don’t get along, there's no default statutory or common-law mechanism to allow one personal representative of an estate to outvote the other, no default procedure for breaking a tie. A tie-breaking mechanism can be written into a will, and with three or more co-representatives, a difficult or unreasonable party might be outvoted. With two, any disagreement can mean a full stop.

Ms. Ritz's children disagreed, repeatedly and substantially, about the sale of the properties held in their mother’s estate. Her son had to bring court applications more than once, on more than one property, just to accomplish basic administrative tasks. A property listed since June 2024 still hadn't sold. Another property worth over $1.5 million hadn't been listed at all. Each round of litigation cost money and time.

In the ruling being discussed here, the court ultimately gave the son sole conduct of the remaining sales. But that resolution took years and incurred significant legal expense. It is also important to note that this ruling was not a final resolution of all the disputes surrounding this estate; it simply allowed the son to sell the estate’s remaining real property.

None of this means co-executors are inherently a bad choice. What it does mean is that naming two people to share the role, particularly people who have a financial stake in the outcome and may not agree, requires thought about what might happen when they don't. Generally, one should avoid granting shared authority and discretion with no tiebreaker to two people who must act unanimously and have many potential reasons to disagree about matters of great consequence.

With a pair of executors, addressing the risk of stalemate and deadlock might mean giving one executor a deciding vote in the event of deadlock or naming an independent third party, such as a lawyer or trust company, to break ties. Alternatively, it might mean naming a single trustworthy competent executor in the first place (often the most efficient approach) or naming three or more.

Sadly, the situation in Ritz v Vass involved further complications beyond the deadlock caused by having two people in charge of the estate who could not agree and cooperate. Ms. Ritz’s daughter wasn’t just an administrator of the estate who could not agree with her co-administrator brother; she had also been living at one of the properties owned by her late mother (a Kelowna property assessed at $1,536,000) for years before her mother's death. She continued living there afterwards, and she claimed her parents had verbally agreed she could remain for the rest of her life, rent-free, in recognition of decades of caregiving.

The adult child in the house, handshake deals, and the dangers of ambiguity

With the economics of home ownership shifting over the last few decades, it has become quite common for parents to find themselves faced with decisions about how best to support adult children who are unable to purchase a home for themselves. With the aging of the baby-boom generation, it is also quite common for an adult child to move back in with aging parents to provide varying degrees of support and companionship in their later years and declining health. These two goals (in-home support for parents, and access to an affordable housing solution for an adult child or children) frequently lead to the organic evolution of living arrangements like the one described in Ritz v Vass.

These situations often look like this: Parent owns and lives in the home. Parent has several adult children. An adult child “A” lives in the home rent-free and helps Parent as Parent ages and declines in independence.

Parent may or may not have informally promised A that, when Parent dies, A would receive something. For example, A may be promised the home, a lump sum for caregiving services, the Parent’s money in a jointly held bank account to which A’s name was added because the bank suggested it would help A assist with Parent’s banking, etc. This may be in recognition of A’s support and care over the years and possibly also in recognition of A’s greater economic need relative to A's siblings (e.g., A's siblings own homes and are more securely financially established than A, who lives with Parent).

It is entirely understandable how such arrangements are considered and entered into informally. It seems to be an obvious and relatively simple solution given the current economic realities of housing affordability for the younger generations and the practical realities of an aging generation with significant real property holdings and, commonly, a desire to age and die at home. It is also understandable why such arrangements are, sadly, very often entered into without everyone involved first securing expert independent professional tax and legal advice. It may seem unnecessary and costly in the context of what seems to be an amicable internal family arrangement.

The problem is ambiguity.

Ambiguity about intentions, entitlements, and desired outcomes is the source of a large portion of the costly and acrimonious legal disputes relating to wills and estates. A concerted effort to identify potential sources of ambiguity and precisely document intentions regarding the desired outcome (e.g. who is entitled to what and under what circumstances) is an essential defence against harm and cost. Ideally, this is done before decisions and commitments are made.

Unfortunately, we frequently encounter folks after they are already years into an informal arrangement like the one described in Ritz v Vass. Sometimes these situations can be salvaged by papering the existing situation as best as possible with the participation of those involved, or undoing the arrangement in favour of something less complicated and risky, though both options are themselves potentially costly.

Sadly, we also frequently encounter these situations after the parent has died and the ambiguity and its flock of related problems are already coming home to roost.

In Ritz v Vass, Ms. Ritz's daughter asserted that her mother had verbally agreed that she could remain in the home for the rest of her life, rent-free, in recognition of decades of caregiving. A verbal agreement may have existed and been a sincere and carefully considered arrangement. But there was no will, no registered interest on title, and no written agreement (detailed or otherwise).

The court found the daughter’s assertion that there was a verbal agreement insufficient and ordered the property sold. Meanwhile, the estate had paid more than $48,500 in carrying costs on the property over roughly three years, with no rent coming in and, at various points, difficulty insuring the property because it remained registered in a dead person’s name.

Justice Morishita also noted that the daughter was in a "significant conflict of interest." She had every personal incentive to delay the sale and, as co-administrator of the estate, the administrative authority to do exactly that.

The lesson here applies to many families, including those with wills.

When a parent allows an adult child to live on the property (whether in the main residence, a secondary suite, or a separate structure on the same lot) and that arrangement is never formally documented, it leaves everyone exposed. The parent's intentions can't be proven. The child has no legal security. When the parent dies, the question of what happens to both the child and the property falls to administrators or courts to sort out, which takes time, money, and frequently damages family relationships beyond repair.

If one intends for a child to have an interest in or right to reside at one’s property, or to be compensated or rewarded for care and support, it is vital to develop a plan with guidance from professionals with the appropriate expertise. The importance of carefully considering and documenting the nature and terms of the arrangement thoroughly at the outset is hard to overstate. The goal is to remove as many opportunities for ambiguity and unpleasant unintended outcomes as possible.

A verbal understanding and a handshake amongst family members over the dinner table typically doesn’t help much when people are unhappy, and the lawyers, courts, and maybe even Canada Revenue Agency get involved.

It's also worth noting that dislodging any uncooperative adult child (or other person for that matter) from an estate property can be a slow process, even without the complications that can arise when that person is also a personal representative of the estate.

If someone is living in the deceased's home and refuses to leave, the Residential Tenancy Act may be engaged, depending on the circumstances. A court order for vacant possession may be needed, and bailiffs (at the estate’s expense) may be required for enforcement of the order. The property can be difficult or impossible to sell with an occupant actively contesting their right to stay. If the uncooperative adult child is also a personal representative of the estate, an already challenging scenario can become significantly harder to resolve.

Further, in some circumstances, potentially expensive remediation may be required if the property has been damaged or left in an unsafe state. For example, the byproducts of drug use or hoarding in a property can pose a life-threatening health risk requiring professional attention.

The Takeaway

Ritz v Vass is a cautionary tale. Robust proactive estate planning is nearly always a good investment when considered against the complications and expense that can arise in its absence. When there isn't a well-considered, well-documented, and up-to-date plan in place to rely on, the complications and real expense come later and bite harder, and this isn’t limited to the lucky few with estates with values in the millions.

The administration of Ms. Ritz’s estate, which potentially could have taken months, stretched to years. The related litigation isn’t complete in 2026, and she died in 2022. Some sound advice from relevant professionals, a will, a single or structured executor appointment, and formalized documentation of her arrangement with her daughter and intentions relating to her home could probably have gone a long way to clarifying and implementing Ms. Ritz's actual wishes, and at a fraction of the cost.

Careful estate and incapacity planning is always worthwhile. An ill-conceived plan (or, worse, the lack of a plan entirely) can leave a legacy of significant expense, delay, confusion, and prolonged legal and interpersonal conflict for surviving family and beneficiaries.

If you have any questions about any of the estate-planning topics addressed in this article, or any other questions about estate and incapacity planning, probate, or estate administration, please let us know.