Finding a Will in Canada

A will is a piece of paper that has to be found

Everything the law does with a will happens after the person who wrote it has died. The court that gives it effect, the executor it names, the family it provides for — none of them can ask the one person who knew where it was kept. A will that cannot be produced does nothing. In practice, a will nobody can find is a will that does not exist.

And the courts want the paper itself. Across the common-law provinces a probate application is built around the original will — in Ontario, the original is filed with the application for a Certificate of Appointment. A photocopy is not a quiet substitute; it is the opening of a much harder argument (below).

That is the whole problem a will registry exists to solve. Two facts normally live and die together: that a will exists, and where it is. A registry separates them from the will-maker’s memory. It records the first fact and the location — never the document itself, and nothing about its contents — so that when the will-maker can no longer answer, a record can. British Columbia’s government registry has worked exactly this way for decades: a “wills notice” holding a name, a date of birth and the place the will is kept.

This is an old, known problem, not a private worry. When the drafters of the 1973 international-wills convention explained their work, they put it plainly: “many wills are never carried out because the very existence of the will itself remains unknown or because the will is never found or is never produced” — and the conference that adopted the convention passed a resolution urging member states to provide for “the safekeeping, search and discovery” of wills. Europe went further: a 1972 Council of Europe convention obliges its members to run national will registries — notice registries recording a name, a date and a location, secret during the will-maker’s lifetime, searchable on proof of death. Canada acceded to the 1973 convention in 1977 — and most provinces never built the registry its resolution called for. Nobody counts the cost: no Canadian statistic on lost wills exists .

Where a registry does exist, it is old and deliberately kept. BC’s wills-notice scheme predates WESA — the 2009 Act carried it forward from the former Wills Act without change, after the province’s law-reform body concluded it “continues to serve a useful purpose.” The rest of the country went the other way: in 2015 Canada’s uniform-law conference, noting that the older practice of depositing wills with a court had fallen into disuse, recommended against requiring any registration system in its model Wills Act — leaving safekeeping to be worked out, if at all, outside legislation .

None of this is exotic. Wills are made privately, stored casually, and then left alone for decades. People move. Law firms merge, retire and wind up. Banks close branches, and a safe-deposit box nobody visits is forgotten. The person who could have answered every one of these questions is the person who has just died. That is the entire case for writing down, anywhere durable, where the will is.

Where the search sits in probate

Probate — in Ontario, a Certificate of Appointment of Estate Trustee; elsewhere a grant of probate or letters probate — is the court process that lets a will operate: it confirms the document and gives the executor authority that banks, land registries and the CRA will accept. The sequence runs the same way across common-law Canada:

1. DeathThe estate comes into existence and someone has to act for it. Nothing else in this list can safely happen first.
2. Find the willEverything downstream keys off this document: who applies, who must be notified, who inherits. It is the one step with no deadline and no form — which is why it is the step that silently goes wrong.
3. Apply for the grantThe executor the will names applies to the court, filing the original will with the application.
4. NoticeThe people with an interest in the estate — the people the will names — are given notice.
5. Inventory, debts and taxAssets are valued, estate administration tax is paid, debts and the CRA come before any distribution.
6. DistributionWhat remains is divided as the will directs — for an Islamic will, by the fixed shares it sets out.

Read the list backwards and the weight of step 2 is obvious: apply on the wrong document — no will, or a superseded one — and every later step inherits the error. That is why an executor’s first obligation is described as a diligent search: the deceased’s lawyer and the firm’s successor, every bank they used, the home, the provincial law society, and any registry that could hold a notice. Courts expect the search to be real and to be documented — in Re O’Reilly (2009), what persuaded the Ontario court to accept a copy of a lost will was “the evidence filed about the search for the original will conducted by the applicants.” British Columbia makes the search structural: a wills-registry search is mandatory before an application for a grant of probate.

Quebec turns the search into a filing requirement. To probate a holograph or witnessed will, the applicant must produce will-search certificates from both the Chambre des notaires and the Barreau du Québec — and even a notarial will, which needs no probate at all, is expected to be confirmed as the last will by the same two searches. The search is not due diligence there; it is a document in the court file.

When a will cannot be found

If no will is found, the law does not wait indefinitely. The estate is administered as an intestacy — as if no will had ever been made. A family member applies to be appointed administrator, and the estate is divided by the province’s formula: a preferential share to the spouse, then fixed statutory fractions by closeness of kinship. The formula is mechanical. It does not ask what the deceased wanted, because the document that said so is not before the court.

Proving a “lost” will is possible, and hard. The Ontario Court of Appeal’s test in Sorkos v. Cowderoy — applied in BC as well — requires the family to establish four things: that the will was properly signed and witnessed; where the will was, traced through to the date of death; that the presumption of revocation is rebutted; and what the will actually said (usually through the drafting lawyer’s file copy). In Ontario, older authority sets the bar for reconstructing the contents at proof beyond a reasonable doubt — a criminal standard in a civil courtroom, questioned since but never overturned. Read the second element again: the family must reconstruct the will’s whereabouts across the years — which is precisely the fact a registry records in advance, dated, with a third party. Some families manage all four. Most estates in this position are simply administered as intestacies — quietly, because nobody knew a will existed at all.

A will that surfaces late

The other failure is slower: the will exists, and it is found after the estate has already moved on without it. What happens depends on how late is late:

Every rung of that ladder is prevented by the same inexpensive act: making sure, while the will-maker is alive, that the people who will need the will know it exists and know where it is.

What a lost will means for a Muslim family

For most Canadians a lost will means the wrong split. For a Muslim family it means something more specific. The person who died wrote a will because Islamic law required the estate to be divided in a particular way — the fixed shares set out in Surah an-Nisa (4:11, 4:12, 4:176) — and no provincial intestacy statute replicates that division, even approximately.

The two formulas are not enemies. Provincial intestacy law is simply indifferent to faraid, and the results diverge at once: in Ontario a surviving spouse takes the first $350,000 outright before anything is divided, while under the Qur’anic shares a widow with children takes one-eighth. Neither number is a rounding error on the other.

The sharpest divergence is not the one people expect. It is not sons and daughters — on the arithmetic the spouse’s preferential share usually swallows that difference. It is parents. Surah an-Nisa 4:11 gives each surviving parent a fixed one-sixth where the deceased leaves children. Ontario’s Succession Law Reform Act gives a parent nothing at all where a spouse or issue survives. So in the ordinary case — a married Muslim with children — an unfound will does not merely redistribute the estate. It disinherits the deceased’s mother and father completely, and their one-sixth is a fixed Qur’anic entitlement, not a preference.

A Muslim who wrote a will discharged an obligation — the hadith on wills describes the written will as something a Muslim should not let two nights pass without having “kept ready with him” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Wills) — and findability is inside that obligation, not an administrative afterthought. If the will cannot be found, the religious obligation is defeated by a filing failure.

Burial wishes and the first 24 hours

There is a second, quieter mismatch. Islamic burial is prompt — the sunnah is to bury without delay, and in Canadian Muslim communities the janazah commonly happens within a day or two (what those first days involve). A will, by contrast, is usually located and read after the funeral, and probate comes weeks later. Burial instructions that live only inside the will are, by design, opened too late to be followed.

There is a harder point behind the timing one. In Saleh v. Reichert (1993) — itself a Muslim burial case — an Ontario court held that a person’s expressed wishes about the disposition of their own body cannot be enforced in law. The right to decide rests with the executor or administrator. There, the administrator chose cremation over the deceased father’s religious objection, and it stood. So writing “bury me according to Islamic rites” into a will is not a weak instruction; in law it is not an instruction at all. What protects the outcome is who you appoint.

Where you can actually search, province by province

Canada has no national will registry. Two provinces run real, official ones — and where they apply they are cheap, authoritative, and the right place to start. Everywhere else there is no government registry at all: there was nothing for the will to be filed in, so the search is done by hand — lawyer, banks, home, law society — with private registries covering only what was voluntarily registered with them.

British Columbia — a real government registry

BC’s Vital Statistics Agency runs a voluntary Wills Registry under Part 4, Division 7 of the Wills, Estates and Succession Act. It is a notice registry: it records that a will exists and where it is kept — never the will itself, and nothing about its contents. Filing is optional, and filing or not filing has no effect on the will’s validity.

Start a BC search with Vital Statistics  ·  our BC guide

Quebec — two registers, one search

Quebec has two: the Chambre des notaires register (wills made before a notary, plus notarized protection mandates) and the Barreau du Québec register (wills lawyers drafted or hold). Since 2 September 2025 a joint portal searches both with a single application — about $30 online, $40 by mail. In Quebec this is not optional in any practical sense: probating a holograph or witnessed will requires certificates from both registers, and heirs are expected to obtain them even where a notarial will needs no probate. One real gap remains: a purely handwritten will that was never deposited with a notary or lawyer is in neither register — no search can surface it.

Quebec’s will-search guidance  ·  our Quebec guide

Everywhere else — nothing to search

The remaining eleven provinces and territories keep, at most, records of estates that already went through probate — useful to historians, useless for finding the will of someone who died last month. Two of them legislated a registry and never switched it on: Newfoundland and Labrador wrote a complete registration scheme — registrar, fees, search powers — into its Wills Act and has left it unproclaimed for more than three decades, and Yukon’s 2021 amendment created the power to make one by regulation, which has not been used. Each link below is our province guide to what does exist there:

• British ColumbiaRegistryGovernment Wills Registry — $20 to search, death certificate required
• QuebecRegistersTwo professional registers — one joint search, about $30
• OntarioNo registryCourt deposit facility exists, but no searchable index
• AlbertaNo registryProbated wills sit at the courthouse that granted probate
• SaskatchewanNo registryThe “Wills and Estates Registry” is an index of past probates
• ManitobaNo registryArchives hold an index of past estate files only
• Nova ScotiaNo registryCounty probate records; the barristers’ society can assist
• New BrunswickNo registryProbate courts and the provincial archives, county by county
• Newfoundland and LabradorOn paper onlyA registration scheme written into the Wills Act, never proclaimed in force
• YukonOn paper onlyA 2021 law allows a registry to be created by regulation; none has been
• Prince Edward IslandUnconfirmedNo general registry; international-wills scheme status not yet verified
• Northwest TerritoriesNo registryThe Wills Act contains no registry provision at all
• NunavutNo registryNo wills registry among the territory’s legal registries

Where our registry fits — and where it doesn’t

Said plainly, because this is the part of the page where a private service is talking about itself:

• We are a private registry. The Islamic Will Registry is not a government service and is not connected to one. Registering here confers no official status and has no effect on whether a will is valid.
• We record location, not documents. Like BC’s wills notice: the fact that a will exists, and where it is kept. We do not hold the will and we record nothing about its contents.
• In BC and Quebec, start with the official registers. They are authoritative and cheap — $20 in BC, about $30 in Quebec — and in Quebec the search is effectively a required court document anyway. They are linked above, and we will always point you there first.
• A search of our registry finds only wills registered with us. No private registry — ours included — can find a will that was never registered anywhere.
• Registering a will is free, and so is asking us to search.

So why run it at all? Because in eleven of thirteen provinces and territories there is no government registry to check, and because the wills our community writes fail in a particular way when they are lost: the Qur’anic shares go unapplied, the wasiyya never happens, the burial wishes arrive after the burial. Other private registries exist — NoticeConnect’s “Canada Will Registry” and OnWills among them — and charge for their searches ; none was built for the estate that is meant to be divided by faraid, where the cost of a lost will is measured in more than money. Our registry exists so that a Muslim family’s will — often the only document standing between the estate and a distribution Islamic law does not recognize — is findable in the first days, not the last. It is free because the point is that the will gets found.

Common questions

Is there a national will registry in Canada?

No. British Columbia runs a government Wills Registry ($20 to search, through Vital Statistics) and Quebec's two professional orders run registers searched jointly for about $30. No other province or territory has one — two (Yukon, Newfoundland and Labrador) passed legislation for a registry that was never brought into force. Private registries, ours included, cover only wills voluntarily registered with them.

Does registering a will make it valid?

No. A registry records that a will exists and where it is kept. Validity is decided by provincial law — signing and witnessing formalities — and is unaffected by registration, everywhere in Canada.

We found a copy but not the original — is that enough?

Sometimes, with work. Where the original was last in the deceased's own keeping, a court may presume it was destroyed deliberately and treat the estate as intestate; the presumption does not apply if the will was left with a lawyer or another custodian. A copy can be admitted if the presumption is rebutted with evidence — including evidence of the search itself. This is a situation for a lawyer, early.

Who is allowed to search for someone's will?

After a death: normally the executor or the family members dealing with the estate. BC requires a photocopy of the death certificate with the search application; Quebec's joint search likewise requires proof of death. While a person is alive, their will is private — BC, for example, lets only the will-maker or their lawyer search. Our own registry is open: anyone may run a search with us, free, without proof of death. That is a deliberate choice and it has a consequence worth knowing — a search will show whether a person has registered with us, so registering is itself a small disclosure. We record only that a will exists and where it is kept; we never hold or release its contents.

Can the janazah go ahead before the will is found?

Burial does not wait for probate. Nothing in the probate process requires the will to be read before burial — which is exactly why burial wishes should never live only inside the will. Tell your family, and keep a written copy of your wishes where they will look in the first hours.

How long does a will search take?

BC's published turnaround is 20 business days by mail, or next business day by courier for an extra $33. Quebec's joint portal issues two certificates; allow several weeks. Ours takes 5 to 10 business days and the result is emailed to you. There is no charge.