British Columbia Notaries Association (BCNA) hosted a successful and engaging Virtual Continuing Education Session on February 26, with a wide variety of presenters and topics. This full day of 5 sessions provided 10 Continuing Education Credits for the current reporting year of July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022.
Hot Topics in Notary Practice 2022 Dr. Margaret Hall
I
had the pleasure of facilitating a panel presentation on Hot Topics in Notary Practice 2022 for the BC Notaries Association Conference held in February.
Hilde Deprez
Sally Houghton
Franca Muraca
Trevor Todd
The panel brought together four legal professionals with diverse practices and diverse perspectives, to discuss a range of issues. Our panelists were Hilde Deprez, a Notary practising in the Point Grey/ Kitsilano area of Vancouver; Sally Houghton, a Notary practising on Quadra Island; Franca Muraca, a Notary practising in Kamloops; and Trevor Todd, a lawyer practising primarily in the area of estate
Volume 31, Number 1, Spring /Summer 2022
I’m a great believer in the idea that what you see depends on where you stand; litigation in the Kerrisdale area of Vancouver. Our “hot topics” were primarily focused on Wills and incapacity planning, reflecting our panel participants and their areas of practice. I’m a great believer in the idea that what you see depends on where you stand. When we bring together people standing in different places, we have an opportunity to see a more complete picture of the landscape. Our panelists brought very different perspectives to our discussion, in terms of the communities where their practices are located and their length of time in practice. Hilde and Trevor were our highly experienced “old hands” on the panel; Sally and Franca had started their practices The Scrivener | www.bcnotaryassociation.ca
more recently. The perspectives they brought to our discussion were equally valuable and exchanging views brought new insights into our conversation. As a litigator, Trevor sees how and why problems can arise after instruments are created and is therefore uniquely positioned to share his experiences on how to make it less likely that things will go wrong. Our Notary participants, in contrast, will be looking at the issues from the “other end”—the point at which legal instruments are created. Our first topic was “navigating tough interpersonal situations” with clients—including whether our panellists have been asked to do something they were not comfortable doing—and what they had learned through those experiences. Our panellists described situations where family members were the ones applying pressure to try to persuade the Notary to prepare a document TABLE OF CONTENTS
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