People Always Told Me, Be Careful What You Do: Wills and Dependency Legislation.

• Author: Fenwick, Fred

It is the kind of tragic story that makes for best-selling novels and Hollywood blockbusters. A young woman, raised in a loving home by two hard-working parents, battles a severe and debilitating disease. Left penniless and alone when her parents pass, she struggles to make ends meet as her body slowly breaks down. Then, an incredible and shocking discovery; she is, in reality, the biological daughter of a wealthy, recently-deceased man whose estate is valued in the tens of millions of dollars.

It was not a fiction for one Alberta woman--it was the very thing that brought her into my office. While it would make for a more nuanced and intriguing story to relay all of the fascinating and heartbreaking details of this case, lawyers are bound by a positive ethical duty, protected at law to keep solicitor/client matters completely confidential.

I can, however, speak of the struggles and balancing of interests inherent in Alberta's wills and dependency legislation that I dealt with as I worked closely with this disabled adult child to eventually obtain a substantial payment from the estate of her deceased biological father.

The woman grew up having no idea that her biological father was a man other than the father that loved and raised her. She was never acknowledged or supported by her biological father and, unsurprisingly, she had not been provided for in his will.

This may have been the sort of thing that, in an earlier age, would have been considered a deep dark secret (love child?) carried to the grave of the biological parents. Today, a more expansive definition of family, a less judgmental attitude towards innocent children and easy and cheap DNA tests make this sort of thing neither deep, dark, nor secret anymore.

How you think about the result may depend on which "side" you are on. On the side of the family members actually mentioned in the will, their share was greatly reduced by the eventual award and the considerable costs of determining a correct and just result. This was a complication that they were not expecting and were innocent of creating. On the side of the dependent child, a genuinely disabled person was lifted out of poverty. On the side of taxpayers, a disabled person was taken off public support freeing up tax dollars to be spent elsewhere. On the side of the deceased person who made the will, this was a pretty stark interference by the state on his freedom to do what he wished with his property, in life and in death. In...