Published in the Estates, Trusts & Pensions Journal, and recognized with the 2026 OBA Foundation’s Widdifield Award for excellence in legal writing in tax and estate planning, this piece1 explores a key area of Quebec succession law and the very real risk that commonly used testamentary clauses may be misinterpreted by the court as suspensive conditions. Of particular importance to estate litigators and estate planners, it underscores the critical importance of careful, precise drafting of testamentary instruments under Quebec law.
“A jurisprudential error in one decision that subsequent decisions reiterate and perpetuate is an example of undesirable compounding with adverse effects. While there may be different interpretations of testamentary clauses, interpretation must be grounded in principles of law.”
“To talk of receiving an acquired successoral entitlement at an indeterminable time dependent wholly upon the liquidator’s performance of her duties is not to talk good law.”
- Piccini Roy, M. & Iacovelli, A. (2025), Compounding Errors: Suspensive Conditions in the Quebec Law of Successions. Estates, Trusts & Pensions Journal, 44(1). 89-106. Thomson Reuters Canada Limited. ↩︎
