Ringing in a New Year provides a good opportunity to refresh ourselves on the legal lessons of years past, including the ever-litigated “minimal evidentiary threshold” required to challenge a Last Will. 
To curb the desire of every disgruntled adult, child, or other relative from putting an estate through the needless and costly litigation of proving a Will, the Court of Appeal held in Neuberger v York, 2016 ONCA 191 that a person intending to challenge a Will must meet some minimal evidentiary threshold before the Court will order the production of third-party records and allow a Will challenge to proceed.

Penalty clauses are found in various legal contracts and agreements. They set out a stated consequence in the event a contract is breached. Penalty clauses that are unconscionably punitive and have no connection to the loss that will result to the “innocent” party have largely been held by Ontario courts to be unenforceable. 
However, in Assayag-Shneer v Shneer, 2023 ONCA 14, the Ontario Court of Appeal made an important distinction in the family law context in situations where an agreement containing a penalty clause is incorporated into a court order.