A Florida Condo Share Almost Complicated a Simple Will

The situation

Tharshini and Abirami had their first child in the spring, and like a lot of new parents, that was the push they needed to finally get a will done. Tharshini works in a warehouse and Abirami is a security guard; between the two of them they had never had much reason to think about estate planning before. They booked a straightforward appointment with Treadstone Law expecting to leave with a will, a power of attorney for property, and a power of attorney for personal care, and to name a guardian for their daughter in case something happened to both of them.

Their household finances were modest and easy to describe: a rented townhouse, two vehicles, some savings, a small workplace life insurance policy each, and Abirami's group retirement savings plan through work. Altogether, once the life insurance was factored in, their estate came to something in the range of $120,000 to $150,000 — a normal, uncomplicated picture for a young family. Nothing about it suggested anything unusual was coming.

What the intake found

Part of Treadstone's standard intake for a new will is a short set of questions about assets outside Ontario, because those assets can quietly change how an estate has to be administered. When Tharshini was asked whether she owned any property outside Canada, she paused and said, almost as an afterthought, that she still owned a share of a condo in Florida.

The story came out simply. Her father had bought a small condo near the coast years earlier and split ownership between Tharshini and her sister Gabriela, who had moved to the United States as an adult and still lived there. When their father passed away, the two sisters inherited the property jointly as tenants in common, meaning each owned a defined half share rather than an automatic right to the whole property. Gabriela used it regularly; Tharshini had visited twice. Neither sister had thought about it since beyond splitting the annual property tax bill.

Tharshini's half share was worth roughly 65,000 to 70,000 US dollars — not a large sum, and nowhere near the size of her Canadian estate. But size was not really the issue. The issue was that she was a non-resident of the United States who owned real property physically located there, and non-residents who own US-situated property are subject to US estate tax on that property when they die, using an exemption amount that is far smaller than the one available to US citizens and residents. A Canadian estate of $150,000 would not come close to triggering any Canadian estate tax concern — Canada does not have a separate estate tax the way the United States does — but the US portion of Tharshini's estate could, on its own, be large enough to require a US estate tax filing on her death, regardless of how modest her total worth was.

There was a second, more practical problem sitting alongside the tax question. US real property generally does not pass to heirs simply because an Ontario will says so. Depending on how the property was held, Tharshini's executor might have needed to open a separate probate-like process in Florida just to deal with her share — on top of, and separate from, whatever was happening with her Ontario estate. That would mean a second set of legal proceedings, in a foreign jurisdiction, layered onto a family that otherwise had a simple estate.

What we did

1. Confirmed how the property was actually held. We asked Tharshini for the Florida deed and any paperwork from her father's estate to confirm she held her share as a tenant in common, not as a joint tenant with a right of survivorship, and to confirm the share had never been retitled since her father's death. This mattered because the ownership structure determines what happens to the share automatically on death versus what has to pass under a will.
2. Explained the exposure in plain terms, without overstating it. We were careful not to alarm the couple about a tax bill that might never materialize. A US estate tax filing obligation is a real administrative and cost burden even when little or no tax ends up owing, because the estate still has to value the property, file the return, and often retain a US practitioner to do it. For an estate the size of Tharshini's, that process alone could eat up a meaningful share of what she had to leave her daughter, purely in professional fees and delay, even before any tax was assessed.
3. Talked through the options, from smallest change to largest. These ranged from simply drafting the will to name a coordinating executor familiar with the cross-border process, to purchasing supplemental life insurance to cover any eventual US filing costs, to removing the US asset from Tharshini's estate altogether by transferring her interest to her sister. We laid out the trade-offs of each rather than pushing toward one answer, since only Tharshini and Abirami could weigh what mattered most to their family.
4. Coordinated a straightforward transfer instead of a complicated ownership structure. Once Tharshini understood the options, she and Gabriela agreed by phone that Gabriela — who actually used the property and lived nearby — would buy out Tharshini's share for its fair value. We prepared the Ontario-side documentation confirming the transaction and the consideration paid, and referred the family to a Florida-licensed real estate lawyer to complete the deed transfer under Florida law, since a US property transfer has to be handled by counsel licensed there.
5. Redirected the proceeds into the couple's Ontario plan. The buyout proceeds, once converted, were used to top up the couple's life insurance coverage and open a modest registered education savings plan for their daughter — assets that stay entirely inside the Canadian estate and probate process the family already understood.
6. Finished the will with the cross-border question closed. With the Florida property out of the picture, we drafted straightforward wills for both Tharshini and Abirami, powers of attorney for property and personal care for each, and a named guardian for their daughter, without any need for cross-border provisions, foreign executors, or contingency language about a US filing that might never happen.

The outcome

The transfer took a few months to complete, mostly on the Florida side of the paperwork, but it closed cleanly. Tharshini no longer owns any property outside Canada, and her estate — now made up entirely of Ontario assets — can be administered the way most modest estates are, without a second jurisdiction, a second legal process, or an exposure that had nothing to do with the size of her actual wealth.

The part of this that stayed with the family was how close they came to leaving the exposure in place by default. Nothing about their day-to-day life pointed to a cross-border estate problem. They were not wealthy, they were not international investors, and the property itself was a minor family inheritance that Tharshini barely thought about. If the intake questionnaire had not specifically asked about property outside Canada, there is a good chance it would never have come up until much later — quite possibly not until after Tharshini's death, when her executor discovered the Florida share while trying to close out her estate and had to unwind the problem under time pressure instead of on the family's own schedule.

Because it was caught during ordinary planning rather than during an actual estate administration, the fix was inexpensive, unhurried, and entirely the family's choice. Gabriela was glad to consolidate full ownership of a property she already used. Tharshini was glad to simplify her estate for her daughter's sake. And the life insurance top-up meant the family came out of the process with more protection, not less.

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