No One Wants to Inherit Environmental Liability – Limiting Beneficiaries' Liability Environmental Protection Act Orders

When drafting a will, don't forget to consider your beneficiaries' personal potential environmental liabilities. If your estate contains contaminated property, your beneficiaries are exposed to unlimited personal potential liability under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA).

One solution? Leave the contaminated property in the hands of the estate trustee to limit environmental liability.

Under the EPA, estate trustees have limited personal liability for costs to comply with Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) Orders. The EPA states that if a fiduciary is ordered under the EPA, they may incur costs limited to "the value of the assets they hold or administer on the date they are served with the order, less their reasonable costs of holding or administering the assets".¹