When a Will Leaves Out the Common-Law Partner Who Depended on It

The situation

Femi and Senthil had lived together in Elliot Lake for nine years. She worked part-time as a grocery clerk; he ran a small landscaping business that did well in the summer and left him underemployed through the winter. Between the two incomes, they got by, and for the last four years Femi had leaned on Senthil's earnings more than her own, especially after her hours were cut back. They never married, but by any practical measure they ran a household together: shared bank withdrawals for groceries and utilities, a truck registered in both names, a landlord who listed them jointly on the lease before they later bought a modest house together in Senthil's name alone.

Senthil died suddenly of a heart attack at 54, without updating his will since before he and Femi got together. The will, drafted more than a decade earlier, left his estate entirely to his son from a previous relationship, Kajan, who was then in his mid-twenties and living in southern Ontario. The estate consisted of the house, a modest savings account, and some equipment from the landscaping business, worth in total somewhere in the range of $180,000 once debts and funeral costs were accounted for. Femi had no ownership interest in the house and was not named anywhere in the will. She came to us within weeks of the funeral, worried she would have nowhere to live and no way to make her case.

The legal problem

Ontario's Succession Law Reform Act allows certain people who were financially dependent on someone who has died to apply to the court for support from that person's estate, even if the will leaves them nothing. A common-law partner can qualify as a dependant if they were being supported, or were entitled to support, by the deceased immediately before death. The test is not whether the couple was married or how long they lived together in the abstract — it is whether there was an established pattern of the deceased contributing to the survivor's support. Femi's situation fit that description reasonably well: years of shared household expenses, a documented pattern of her relying on his higher and more consistent income during the winter months when her own hours were thin, and no independent means to replace that support.

The complication was that dependant's support claims exist in tension with a competing reality: Kajan was also, in a sense, sympathetic. He was young, had grown up without much contact with his father in his teenage years, and viewed the will — old as it was — as his father's clear and final wish. He was not wealthy himself and had been counting on the inheritance to help with a down payment on his own place. Ontario law does not ask a court to decide who is more deserving in a moral sense; it asks whether the deceased had a legal or moral obligation to support the dependant, and if so, how much of the estate should be allocated to satisfy that obligation while still respecting the will as far as possible. That balancing exercise, and the fact that a court has real discretion over the outcome, is what made a negotiated resolution worth pursuing before either side committed to a full court application.

There was also a timing pressure specific to this type of claim: Ontario law sets a strict deadline, measured from the date an estate trustee is appointed, for bringing a dependant's support application. Missing it does not automatically end the claim, but it puts the burden on the applicant to convince the court to allow a late filing, which adds cost, delay and risk that a negotiated approach avoids entirely. Femi had lost enough time already grieving and searching for records before she came to us, so preserving her position quickly became the first priority.

What we did

1. Confirmed the claim was still open and moved to protect it. We identified the deadline that applied to Femi's situation and made sure any formal step needed to preserve her right to apply was taken well ahead of it, so that negotiations could proceed without the clock forcing a rushed court filing.
2. Built the evidentiary picture of dependency. We gathered bank statements, the lease history, utility bills, and a written account from Femi of the household's finances over the nine years, focused specifically on showing the pattern of support during the leaner winter months. Dependant's support claims succeed or fail on this kind of unglamorous documentary detail, not on the strength of the relationship in the abstract.
3. Wrote to the estate trustee and Kajan's lawyer setting out the claim and its basis. The letter explained the legal test plainly, attached the supporting records, and proposed a structured negotiation rather than opening with a court application, which signals cooperation while still making clear the claim was serious and properly grounded.
4. Assessed what a court would likely order, and used that as the negotiating range. Courts weigh the length of the relationship, the dependant's age and health, her ability to become self-supporting, and the size of the estate against the deceased's other obligations. Given the estate's modest size, a court was unlikely to award Femi everything, but was also unlikely to leave her with nothing, so we framed the negotiation around a realistic middle range rather than an opening position designed to provoke a fight.
5. Proposed a two-part settlement instead of a single lump sum. Rather than forcing an immediate sale of the house to pay Femi out, we suggested she remain in the home for a fixed period to allow her to find new housing on her own terms, combined with a smaller lump sum from the estate's savings, with Kajan receiving the house's full value once the period ended and it was sold.
6. Mediated the remaining disagreement over amount and timing. Kajan's lawyer initially resisted any occupation period, wanting the house sold immediately. Several rounds of exchanges over roughly six weeks narrowed the gap, with both sides making real concessions rather than either one getting everything they had asked for at the outset.

The outcome

The parties reached a settlement without either side filing a court application. Femi received a lump sum of about $35,000 from the estate's savings and equipment sale proceeds, along with the right to remain in the house for ten months at no cost, giving her time to find alternative housing and stabilize her finances. Kajan kept his father's remaining estate, including the full proceeds of the house once it sold after Femi moved out, and avoided the cost, delay and public nature of a contested court proceeding. Neither side got what they might have hoped for at the very start: Femi did not secure a permanent interest in the house, and Kajan gave up a meaningful slice of an inheritance he had assumed was untouchable. Both, however, avoided the far larger risk of a court fight that could easily have cost more in legal fees than the entire disputed amount and left the relationship between them, already strained, permanently broken.

The settlement was documented in a formal release and signed by both parties along with the estate trustee, closing off any later claim once its terms were carried out. Femi moved out within the agreed window, the house sold soon after, and the estate was distributed according to the negotiated split rather than the strict wording of a decade-old will.

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