Lindsay Ann Histrop

Lindsay is a partner in the Tax and Trusts Group and Chair of Trusts and Estates at Gardiner Roberts. Her practice focuses on personal tax and estate planning, estate administration, and estate litigation. She regularly advises clients – particularly high-net-worth individuals – on sophisticated planning matters, including wills and trusts, alter ego and joint partner trusts, domestic contracts, powers of attorney, mental capacity proceedings, court audits, and estate and trust taxation. Lindsay’s work also includes probate tax planning, cross-border estate planning, postmortem planning, estate freezes, capital gains exemption planning, prescribed rate loan strategies, and the strategic use of trusts to achieve tax efficiency.

Lindsay is a recognized thought leader in tax and estate planning. She has lectured extensively for organizations including the Canada Tax Conference, the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Society of Ontario, Insight Seminars, and Federated Press. She is the author of Estate Planning Precedents: A Solicitor’s Manual (Thomson Reuters), a six-volume service updated annually and widely regarded as an essential resource for estates and trusts practitioners across Canada. Lindsay has also published articles in the Canadian Tax Journal, Tax Management International Journal, and the Ontario Bar Admission Course materials.

Her expertise is widely recognized, with listings in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory and Best Lawyers in Canada, and a profile in Who’s Who in Canada as a noteworthy Canadian.

Expertise

Representative work

• Guiding a complex estate administration for the foreign family of a deceased Canadian immigrant through a complex dispute over 4 potential last wills and with multiple beneficiaries and conflict of laws issues
• Handling a complex post-mortem variation of trusts under a will, deferring taxes of over $2.5 million, thereby ensuring the continued viability of the deceased’s highly successful business.
• Negotiating a settlement, on behalf of the estate, in respect of a contentious will interpretation matter in which there were over 700 potential beneficiaries, saving the estate and its beneficiaries thousands of dollars in legal costs.
• Assisting a terminally ill client in structuring her estate plan to benefit her family and favoured charities, preserving the estate for the beneficiaries by eliminating substantial income and probate taxes on death.
• Resolving a family dispute over the division of the deceased’s real estate holdings and other assets on death, maintaining both family ownership and family harmony.
• Assisting executors in the efficient management of a business and its 65 employees following the sudden death of the owner‑manager and successfully achieving the sale of the business within six months of the owner’s death.