People often wish to ensure confidentiality in doing their
estate planning as an important goal. A trust is a common vehicle
to do so, since court probate processes, which have been around for
centuries, are public and once a will is probated it becomes a
public document. The current government trend is towards greater
disclosure of beneficial ownership, making achieving
confidentiality in estate and trust matters much more difficult, if
not impossible, in some cases.
Obtaining a court grant of probate (or certificate of appointment
of estate trustee with a will in Ontario), which is often required
for an executor to be able to administer a person's assets
after his or her death, involves the filing of the deceased
person's last will with the court making it available to the
public. In addition, the total value of a person's assets must
be disclosed in the application form, as well as the addresses, and
if minor beneficiaries, dates of birth, of all beneficiaries must
be provided to the court. While a probate application is not
exactly a newspaper article, it is available to anyone who wants to
see it and who is willing to bother to take a look at the court
file. Now in Ontario a fulsome list of all estate assets subject to
probate is required to be filed after the court certificate is
issued, although this is not a publicly-available document.
Trusts have traditionally been a means of achieving greater
confidentiality, because assets in a trust do not require a probate
grant or other court document to be administered on the death of
the person setting up the trust or when the trustees who administer
the trust are making distributions to beneficiaries. Unless
trustees and beneficiaries have a dispute requiring court
intervention to resolve, the trust terms and asset information do
not form part of the public record and are kept private, although
they are subject to legitimate information requests and filings
with tax authorities.
This level of confidentiality has been eroded as governments
implement more disclosure requirements for estates and trusts (see
our blog "
The Movement to Transparency and the Erosion of Privacy").
For example, in Ontario, a transfer of land requires that the new
owners provide certain information regarding all individuals and
entities who will retain or be given an interest in the land but
who will not be the registered owners of the land (referred to as
"beneficial owners", as distinguished from "legal
owners"). While Ontario's current beneficial ownership
disclosure rules are confined to information-gathering for the
Ontario Government only, and are not part of the pubic record,
other jurisdictions such as B.C. have implemented beneficial
ownership registries which could result in such information being
freely publicly available. While the beneficiaries of most trust
structures are not disclosed pursuant to the current Ontario rules,
this may change in the future.
Taxation is the underlying cause of many of these recent disclosure
obligations and registries (anti-money laundering is also an
often-cited purpose). Governments either want to find new sources
of revenue or to catch the non-compliant who are not paying their
"fair share". Disclosure requirements, coupled with
penalties for non-compliance are one means of achieving these
goals. And since most if not all governments are more than
interested in obtaining further information regarding their
non-compliant taxpayers, many are now cooperating on an
international level in an unprecedented way. Through bilateral or
multilateral agreements or through unilaterally imposed obligations
such as the U.S. FATCA regime, governments are obtaining
information from other jurisdictions that was previously
unavailable to them. Disclosure of beneficial ownership is only the
latest of such measures. It won't be the last; the overarching
policy reasons behind these measures make it difficult to argue
against them, even if you believe that they may go too far.
Regardless of one's views on these matters, it is important to
seek professional advice and guidance to structure one's
affairs as optimally as possible, and as confidentially as
achievable, within the confines of current disclosure
obligations.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.