What is a Fiduciary?

 A fiduciary is a person entrusted with the ethical responsibility for someone’s assets, to care for them or another person(s).    

This could be a Power of Attorney, acting for a person when they are unable to themselves, an Executor, settling  an estate when someone has died, or a Trustee, acting in many situations.

Acting as a fiduciary comes with countless responsibilities,  and it is easy to stray from following fiduciary best practices, particularly when Canadians have not had the opportunity to fully learn what those responsibilities entail.  

Education is the key to protecting Canadians.

 With the surge of the senior population, elder financial abuse has become a national challenge affecting thousands of elderly people, with devastating individual consequences and considerable costs to society.  

We need to promote knowledge in this vital area.

 Our senior citizens deserve nothing less. 

We ask a lot of our kids.  Are we being fair?

We appoint them as Powers of Attorney and as our Executors giving them little guidance, no training and no opportunity to ask any questions at all.

We should ensure they can least find the professionals that can help, and make fiduciary education available for themselves.

To make the world a better place, we should start in our own backyard.  We begin by helping our children.  We can ask professionals to point their clients to means of education, institutions to have credentialed specialists available (see courses under Learn) and we can ask government to encourage life-long learning!