One of the last things you want to think about when your spouse or parent has died is all the paperwork that you have to go through.
There are a few things that are time sensitive, though, and removing your late spouse or parent from title has now become one of those things.
Here are three important reasons why you shouldn’t wait to remove your late spouse from the title to your property.
Avoiding Empty Homes and Vacancy Taxes
There are now two types of vacancy taxes in BC – Vancouver’s Empty Homes Tax and BC’s new provincial Speculation and Vacancy Tax.
These are two separate taxes, and its entirely possible you might be caught by BOTH taxes if you live in Vancouver.
There are exemptions from these taxes for deceased people, but these exemptions are only good for a short period of time after the owner dies.
If you have a deceased owner on title, and you have gone past the allowable time for clearing their name from title, you may have to pay these empty homes or vacancy taxes for that owner’s share of the property.
Contact us to ask us about these exemptions, and about your timelines for removing a deceased owner from title.
Getting Ready for a Sale
If you are going to be selling your home, then you will need to remove any deceased owners from title.
This should be done before you list the property for sale, to make sure you give yourself enough time to deal with any last minute surprises.
Sometimes when people are getting ready for a sale of their property, they find things like old mortgages which are still showing on title, or notations on title showing the duplicate certificate of title as having been removed from the land title office.
These are issues which can significantly slow or even halt the sale of property, and we can help you clear them from title at the same time we are sorting out the ownership for you.
Preparing for Emergencies
No one likes to think about getting sick. But it does happen.
One of the most important reasons for removing a deceased person from title (particularly a deceased spouse) is so that your family will have less to deal with if you get sick.
We all try to make things as easy as possible for those who might need to look after us, and clearing up title issues is one simple way to make sure that your family only needs to look after you, and not an ongoing string of legal issues.
If you have given someone a Power of Attorney, they will be able to help you with this work using that Power of Attorney, but it will cost more for your Attorney to do this work than it will for you to do it.
How do you remove a deceased person from title?
We would be happy to help you deal with removing a deceased person from title, and clearing up any old charges which are still lingering on title to your property.
Call us, and we will explain the process and costs to you. You will need an original Death Certificate for the person, and that will be returned to you when the process is complete.
If you feel comfortable dealing with legal issues yourself, you can also call the appropriate Land Title Office and ask them to send you a package to remove a deceased person from title.
If you get the package from the Land Title Office and find yourself getting confused or frustrated by it, call us. Sometimes it’s easier to just hire someone to do the work for you, and we’re here to help.