Alberta Courts have been busy on the topic of costs in estate
litigation in the past few months. Four recent decisions
issued out of three judicial centres in Alberta provide a good
reminder of just how unpredictable litigation is and the
Court's wide discretion in compensating parties for their
litigation expenses.
General principles
If there was still any doubt, I think it is now clear in Alberta
at least, that whether litigation concerns an estate or not, the
general rule that "costs follow the event" is the
starting point. To put it perhaps more harshly, the Courts
for the most part continue to give effect to the "loser
pays" principle in litigation. There is a narrow
exception to relieve a losing party of those costs consequences in
cases where the testator has caused the litigation or there were
sound public policy reasons behind the dispute. However,
simply dying without a will or cutting out a beneficiary who
expected to inherit is not enough to find
