Supreme Court of Canada Denies Leave to Appeal in Picketts v. Hall

The Supreme Court of Canada has denied leave to appeal the British Columbia Court of Appeal decision in Picketts v. Hall, 2009 BCCA 329 (see the SCC News Release here).

Picketts v. Hall is a significant Wills Variation Act case because of the Court of Appeal's analysis of the moral obligations owed to a common-law spouse. The Court of Appeal said that there is no distinction between a testator's moral obligations to a common-law spouse and to a married spouse. The court also considered the distribution in an intestacy as an indicia of a spouse's moral obligations.

I wrote about the Court of Appeal decision here.