Estate Lawyers and Estate Planning
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Our Estate Lawyers Prepare Custom Estate Plans for High Net Worth Individuals and Families
An experienced estate lawyer will tell you that, for many people, making decisions about succession after their death can be a challenging and sometimes uncomfortable process. It raises many questions and concerns. The larger and more complex your estate, the more daunting the task may seem. Each estate lawyer at our firm is here to help you with thoughtful and practical advice.
At the Toronto, Ontario law firm of O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP, our estate planning lawyers provide you with a comfortable setting and process to make informed decisions, based on optimal solutions that leave you, the high net worth or ultra high net worth client, with confidence that your wishes have been carried out, giving you peace of mind.
How to Find the Best Estate Lawyer for You
Most of our clients have been referred to us by other professional advisors, such as accountants and other lawyers. Many trusted advisors refer their clients to O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP. Other clients may find us after an Internet search, using such keywords as: “estate lawyers near me”, “best estate lawyer Toronto,” “best estate lawyer Ontario,” “cross-border estate lawyer,” “estate planning lawyer” and “estate law firms near me.” We have been serving high net worth and ultra high net worth clients for more than 27 years. We have earned the trust of affluent clients who rely on us for the success of their family succession plans.
Many of our clients have been with us for decades. Our estate planning lawyers help them update their wills, powers of attorney, and other estate planning documents as their lives change and their assets grow: a second marriage, children and grandchildren, domestic and international businesses and assets, vacation homes, and investment portfolios.
Whatever route you took to find us, you will find each estate lawyer at O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP knowledgeable, professional, attuned to your goals, and focused on implementing your estate plan in an efficient, cost-effective way.
“Margaret O’Sullivan is recognized as one of the leading figures in the market on estate, will and trust planning and related litigation.”
— Who’s Who Legal Canada 2017
Our Estate Lawyers Understand Estate Planning for Large, Complex, High-Value Estates of Affluent Clients
For more than 27 years, we’ve been distilling big-firm expertise and recreating it in a discreet, boutique firm setting for Canadian and international clients. Here are four reasons for choosing O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP when you need to retain an estate planning lawyer:
- Each estate lawyer at our firm understands the exacting needs of high net worth and ultra high net worth clients.
- O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP provides a comfortable atmosphere where the intricacies of your finances and family relationships may be discussed frankly and with discretion. Your trust and estate needs are unique. Every estate lawyer at our firm understands the key to achieving your individual estate planning goals is first understanding your personal objectives and values.
- The solutions we provide—whether simple or sophisticated—are presented in a straightforward manner and carried out cost-effectively by our estate planning lawyers.
- We provide a level of personal service not achievable in large institutional or transaction-oriented law firms. We understand your need for confidentiality and privacy best achieved in a boutique law firm setting.
Our Estate Lawyers Help You Navigate Cross-Border and Multijurisdictional Estate Matters with Confidence
If your trust and estate matter involves assets, beneficiaries or representatives in another jurisdiction or international locale, our estate lawyers can step in and provide solid legal direction. Each estate planning lawyer at O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers understands how best to assist clients with assets in a number of jurisdictions.
We are well known in the trust and estate profession for complex high net worth planning and administration with both a multijurisdictional and a Canada-U.S. cross-border focus. We helped to pioneer estate planning for cross-border clients as well as estate planning for multijurisdictional clients. The estate lawyer team at our boutique estate law firm is unique in this regard.
Many of our mandates involve advising clients with legally significant ties to or assets in more than one jurisdiction, including the U.S., the U.K., many European Union countries, and elsewhere.
How Each Estate Planning Lawyer Works with High Net Worth Clients
We understand what is important to our HNW clients and how to preserve, safeguard, and protect their assets for their successors. Our role is to ensure a smooth estate planning or estate administration process aimed at these four goals:
- Finding solutions and opportunities in the context of conflicting international succession laws in planning your estate and for incapacity, including the use of separate situs wills and powers of attorney or their equivalent where appropriate
- Navigating each jurisdiction’s legal processes working with local legal counsel including obtaining probate, or equivalent, where required
- Minimizing probate, tax implications and unnecessary costs and expenses
- Transferring property efficiently and cost-effectively
Learn more about how the estate lawyer team at our firm can assist high net worth and ultra high net worth clients:
Our Estate Lawyers Match Your Needs to Optimal Legal Solutions
Our estate lawyers are well-known for skill and expertise in planning for complex estates and high value assets, as well as cross-border and multijurisdictional estate law matters. By staying on the leading edge of trust and estate law and ahead of the curve, we equip ourselves to consistently provide high-quality advice to a discerning clientele.
We strive to ensure that you have all the tools you need to optimize your lifetime planning in order to create a solid estate plan. This often involves not only succession of assets but also advance planning for incapacity at any age.
No matter what the size or complexity of your situation or estate, the estate lawyer team at O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP can provide in-depth advice on such areas as:
- Establishing trusts
- Providing for beneficiaries with special needs planning
- Domestic contracts and family law planning
- Using life insurance policies in an estate plan
- Minimizing tax and probate fees
- Charitable giving and private foundations
- Cottage property succession
- Powers of attorney for personal care and financial matters
- Incapacity planning
We want you to walk away with a solid, streamlined estate plan. Our goal is to simplify the complexity and to let you and your loved ones move forward with confidence with you taking ownership of your estate plan. With our skilled estate planning lawyers, you can be confident in the knowledge that your wishes have been carried out in the most effective, pragmatic and cost-efficient way.
Our Estate Lawyers Transform Your Goals into Sound Estate Plans
When you turn to us for help, our estate lawyers’ first priority is to gain a thorough and detailed understanding of your needs and goals. Only after listening carefully will we offer you an array of possible options.
We take a balanced, holistic, and collaborative approach to presenting estate planning options that match your vision. We never use a one-size-fits-all approach. Our estate planning lawyers do not make decisions for you; we present the most appropriate legal options available to you to help make your decision. We then help you explore the benefits, risks, and costs of each option.
“Margaret is one of Canada’s experts on private international law and multijurisdictional planning.”
“What is notable about Margaret is that she has a multijurisdictional skill set. She is very good at assisting families with a cross-border fact pattern.”
“Margaret has excellent ideas and is very good at managing a file and making it go forward.”
Chambers High Net Worth Guide 2025 | Private Wealth Law – Canada, Band 1
Margaret O’Sullivan has been ranked for 10 years.
Our Estate Lawyers are Recognized Leaders in Estate Law
We are also a top-ranked, peer-recognized firm. Our founder, managing partner and highly respected estate lawyer Margaret O’Sullivan, has been “Band 1” recognized, the highest level for a lawyer in an area of practice, by Chambers and Partners in the High Net Worth Guide 2025 for 10 years as a top estate planning lawyer in Canada.
Margaret O’Sullivan, Marly Peikes, Josh Cohen, and Namratha Sankar are recognized by The Best Lawyers in Canada™ for 2025.
Margaret O’Sullivan is recognized in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory 2025 as a “leading estate planning lawyer”.
Margaret is recognized in Private Client Global Elite 2024 as one of the top trust and estate lawyers globally.
O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers is ranked a “Top 10 Wills, Trusts and Estate Law Boutique” in Canada for 2023-2024, by Canadian Lawyer Magazine, published by Key Media. The survey is based on peer reviews by Canadian lawyers.
Margaret O’Sullivan won the “Client Choice Award” by Lexology in 2025 for outstanding client service.
The O’Sullivan estate lawyer team has published its go-to book, “Trust and Estate Essentials: Achieving Success in Family Succession,” 3rd Edition in June 2025. It has 400 pages of practical information as well as thought leadership and is divided into 48 germane chapters.
Margaret O’Sullivan won Bronze in the “Outstanding Individual of the Year” category in the Citywealth Powerwomen Awards USA 2024. She was the only Canadian nominated.
O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers was awarded Boutique Firm of the Year 2019/20 at the STEP Private Client Awards held in London U.K. on September 25, 2019.
Our estate lawyer team at O’Sullivan Estate Lawyers LLP is a leader in Estate Law. All our estate lawyers are active speakers and thought leaders; each estate lawyer contributes articles to LAW360 Canada, published by LexisNexis. We are committed to staying at the forefront of the law and leading the charge.
Our estate lawyers contribute to a bi-weekly blog which has more than 3,000 subscribers and is considered one of the top trust and estate blogs in Canada by many industry insiders.
Click on our Awards and Accolades.
Click on In the Media, for articles we have been quoted in, or written and published in various publications.
Arrange a Consultation with an Estate Lawyer Today
Our estate lawyer team is ready to meet with you, listen to your needs, and explain how we can help. Contact us to set up a meeting.