Servicing: Victoria, Oak Bay, Saanich, Uplands, and the University area.
Do you have questions about the current status of your estate?
Contact us for a 15-minute complementary review of existing legal documents
Preparing a Power of Attorney (POA) enables you to appoint a trusted person to look after your affairs in the event you become mentally incapable due to accident or illness. It is also common to prepare a POA if you will be out of the country for an extended period of time, or if you are a student moving away to attend a post secondary institution. This document allows your spouse, family member, friend, or legal representative—your Attorney—to handle a variety of transactions on your behalf such as banking, vehicle or home insurance, utilities, property transfers, and many others.
Powers of Attorney have changed significantly in the last couple of years and are now a more flexible document. You have the ability to appoint alternate attorneys who may act in the event your first choice is unable or unwilling to do so. We can also customize paragraphs according to your circumstances and preferences as well as indicating restrictions within the document to limit certain transactions.
We advise you not to make unnecessary copies of your Power of Attorney. Your POA is a legal document, and your Attorney will require the original in order to act for you. A copy is not sufficient. Any agency requiring a copy of your POA (e.g., your bank, insurance company, care home, etc.) can make their own copy from the original and return the original to you. We strongly advise that you not relinquish the original POA to anyone. If your POA gets misplaced, you will need to complete a new one, and this may be difficult if you are travelling, incapacitated and/or deemed incapable of executing legal documents. Please keep your POA in a secure location and advise your Attorney where is stored and how they can access it if they need it.
The best time to do a Power of Attorney is when you are healthy.
Representation Agreements are designed to allow an adult to appoint a representative, or multiple representatives, to make decisions regarding health care, personal care, and routine management of financial affairs. It is possible to appoint one representative to handle all areas, or multiple representatives with areas of specific responsibility. As with Powers of Attorney, these documents are flexible and can be customized.
You will need two appointments with the Notary. The first appointment will be to gather the required information and answer any questions you may have. The Notary will ask you a series of questions in order to tailor the document(s) to your specific needs. We then prepare the document(s), and the second appointment will be to review what we have prepared, make any changes if required, and complete the signing.
Please allow for an hour-long appointment each visit. We find that, when discussing estate planning matters, most appointments take 45 to 60 minutes.
The Shipley family is a third generation Victoria family. The last 40 years have been spent in the Gordon Head area of Victoria where both children, Jillyn Shipley and Tim Shipley, were born and raised.