Reviewing a Marriage Contract After a Business Sale or Inheritance in Ontario

A marriage contract is usually written around the picture of your finances at one moment in time — what you each owned, what you each earned, what you expected might happen. Selling a business or receiving a significant inheritance can change that picture completely, and a contract that made sense before the event may no longer reflect what either spouse actually wants, or even what the numbers in it were built to assume.

This is one of the most common — and most overlooked — reasons to revisit an existing marriage contract. Couples often treat the signing as a one-time task rather than something to maintain, so a major financial event passes without anyone asking whether the old agreement still fits.

Here's why these two events in particular tend to matter so much, and what usually needs a second look.

Why a Business Sale Changes the Picture

If a marriage contract was drafted while a spouse still owned and operated a business, its terms may have been built around that business's value as a going concern, its cash flow, or an assumption about how it would eventually be divided or excluded from equalization. Once the business is sold, that asset no longer exists in the same form — it has typically become cash, investments, or other property, which raises new questions:

• Does the contract's excluded-property language still apply to what the sale proceeds became, or was it written narrowly around the business itself?
• Has the sale changed the overall balance of assets between spouses in a way the original contract didn't anticipate?
• Were there tax consequences from the sale that affect what's actually available to either spouse going forward?

None of these questions have a universal answer — they depend entirely on how the original contract was worded and what actually happened in the sale.

Why an Inheritance Changes the Picture

Under Ontario's Family Law Act, gifts and inheritances received from a third party during the marriage are generally excluded from equalization, provided that money or property can still be traced back to its original source. An inheritance can complicate an existing marriage contract in a few ways:

• The contract may not clearly address how a large inheritance interacts with whatever property division scheme the couple already agreed to
• If the inheritance is used for shared purposes — paying down the mortgage, renovating the matrimonial home, funding a joint investment — its excluded status can become harder to establish later, regardless of what the contract says
• A significant inheritance can shift the overall financial balance between spouses enough that the original contract's assumptions no longer reflect reality

Signs It's Time to Review Your Marriage Contract

• [ ] You or your spouse sold, wound down, or significantly restructured a business since signing
• [ ] Either of you received an inheritance or a substantial gift from a third party
• [ ] Your contract's language around excluded property was written narrowly around assets you no longer hold in that form
• [ ] Your combined net worth has changed substantially since the contract was signed
• [ ] You've used inheritance or sale proceeds toward the matrimonial home or other jointly held property
• [ ] It's simply been several years since you last had the contract reviewed by a lawyer

What Often Needs Updating

How the Review Process Generally Works

Reviewing an existing marriage contract does not mean starting over from a blank page. A lawyer will typically read through the current agreement, ask about what's changed financially since it was signed, and identify which clauses no longer match your circumstances. From there, the contract can usually be updated through a formal amendment — which, like the original contract, needs to be in writing, signed by both spouses, and witnessed to be enforceable, and is generally strongest when each spouse gets independent legal advice on the changes before signing.

Frequently asked questions