Do we need probate in every country where there are assets?
Usually you need authority in each place, and an appointment obtained in one country is not automatically recognised in another. What that authority is called and how it is obtained differ, and so does the evidence required, often certified copies of documents that are themselves slow to produce. Not every asset needs a grant; some can be released on other evidence, and identifying those early is the part of the work that gets money to the family soonest. The first task in any cross-border estate is a list of assets by jurisdiction, with the authority each one will require written beside it.
Which of the assets can be released to the family first?
The ones that do not depend on the slowest jurisdiction. In practice that means assets held locally, assets that pass outside the estate by their own terms, and holdings a custodian will release on evidence short of a full grant. Everything else waits on authority, filings and clearance in the country where it sits. It is worth doing this sorting deliberately at the beginning, because the default is that everything moves at the pace of the hardest item. We produce the list at the outset, with the requirement against each asset, so the executor can see where to push.
Why is the estate still open when the Canadian side is finished?
Because a cross-border estate closes on the slowest jurisdiction's timetable, not on the average of them. Each country wants its own authority, its own filings and its own clearance before assets there are released, and the steps are sequential rather than parallel: a credit at home cannot be finalised until the foreign tax is assessed, and clearance cannot be requested until the returns it covers have been. So the domestic file being complete is a necessary step and not the finish. The useful thing an executor can do is know which single item the closing date depends on, and chase that one.
In what order should the filings be done in a two-country estate?
Start with the country whose tax the other will give credit for, because the credit cannot be settled until that tax has been assessed. Around that, valuations come first: they feed both sides, and commissioning them once for both purposes saves repeating the exercise on inconsistent figures. Authority in each jurisdiction runs in parallel, since nothing else can be done there without it. Clearance is last everywhere. Sequencing is most of the work in these files, and getting it wrong is expensive in a particular way, because filings made on provisional figures have to be redone rather than merely corrected.
The cash is all in one country and the tax is owed in another?
That is the usual shape of the problem, and it is a sequencing question rather than a legal one. Each remittance once it reaches the authority concerned has to be traceable to the estate it came out of, so funding a foreign liability from domestic cash needs recording at the time: which estate bore it, at what exchange rate, and on whose account. Do that and the credit claim and the beneficiaries' entitlements still reconcile at the end. Leave it undocumented and the executor faces an argument with the tax authorities and with the family over the same movement of money.
Can I act as executor here and in the other country too?
Sometimes, but it takes two separate steps rather than one. Being appointed in one place gives you nothing in the other until authority is obtained there as well, and some jurisdictions require a local representative regardless of whom the will names. There can also be consequences for an executor's own tax position from acting, which is a reason to look at the mechanics before accepting. Where obtaining authority in both places would be slow or costly, a separate appointment for each jurisdiction is common, with each one's territory written down so nobody acts over the same asset twice.
Is double taxation legal?
Yes. Nothing prevents two countries from taxing the same income under their own domestic law — each is exercising its own jurisdiction. What treaties and credit systems do is relieve the outcome rather than prohibit the charge, and relief is generally something you must claim on a return or a form, not something applied automatically. Miss the claim and the double charge stands. Double taxation explains the mechanism.
How do you avoid double taxation?
You claim relief once, in the right country, in the right order. Usually the source country taxes first, the residence country then gives a credit for that tax against its own charge on the same income, and a treaty caps the source-country rate. Getting the order wrong is what produces a double charge you then have to unwind. The mechanism differs by income type, which is why we map the whole position before filing either return. See how to avoid double taxation.
