Court of Appeal for Ontario

Date: 2025-05-20
Docket: COA-24-CV-0944

Before: van Rensburg, Sossin and Gomery JJ.A.

Style of Cause

In the Estate of Mae Eleanor Winter, deceased

Between:
Darrel Winter, Richard T. Winter, and Gregory William Winter
Plaintiffs (Appellants)

and

Steve R. Meek and Melanie Mary Faye Spurio, in their capacities as Estate Trustees of the Estate of Mae Eleanor Winter, deceased
Defendants (Respondents)

Counsel:
Douglas Turner, for the appellants
John Montgomery, for the respondents

Heard and released orally: May 16, 2025

On appeal from the order of Justice Stephen T. Bale of the Superior Court of Justice, dated July 31, 2024.

Reasons for Decision

[1] The appellant has not demonstrated any palpable and overriding error or any extricable legal error on the part of the motion judge.

[2] The motion judge correctly proceeded on the basis that he was interpreting minutes of settlement that had been incorporated into a court order. He identified and carefully applied the appropriate principles of contractual interpretation.

[3] In the motion judge’s view, there was some ambiguity in the specific words used respecting the obligation for the parents’ bequests to the appellants. He was cautious in his approach to the evidence the parties had advanced respecting the surrounding circumstances, and he properly refused to consider as part of the interpretation the purely subjective (and contradictory) evidence put forward by the parties.

[4] The motion judge considered the words used, including the agreement as a whole; the factual matrix when the minutes of settlement were signed; and evidence of subsequent conduct consisting of the negotiation by the parties’ lawyers of the wording that was used in the parents’ wills. He also addressed the argument, renewed on appeal, that by virtue of the minutes of settlement, the parents had demonstrated an intention to hold the property as tenants in common, and had thereby effected a severance of their joint tenancy. He considered that argument to be circular, in that such an intention could only be found if in fact the appellants’ interpretation of the minutes of settlement were accepted. We see no error in this assessment, nor are we persuaded that the motion judge departed from the authority of Hansen Estate v. Hansen, 2012 ONCA 112, 109 O.R. (3d) 241.

[5] For these reasons the appeal is dismissed. The appellants shall pay costs fixed in the all-inclusive sum of $8,000 to the estate from their final distribution.

“K. van Rensburg J.A.”
“L. Sossin J.A.”
“S. Gomery J.A.”