This lawyer was not adequately educated in the rules governing the eligibility of property transfer tax. When remortgaging our house and transferring the title from my name into my common-law husbands, the lawyer neglected to inform us that we would not be eligible for the property tax exemption because my spouse had not been in BC for a period of 1 or more years.
We also did not qualify because he had not lived with me for more than 2 years.
After over one year later we were faced with a $1400 bill, payable within 30 days. Had we known about the transfer tax we could have elected to not remortgage at the time OR pay the bill at the time of signing when we had the funds.
After discussing this with the lawyer (with over one month of phone tag) he flat out refused to accept responsibility for the misinformation (aka lack of information) and now we have to take him to small claims courts.in discussion with other lawyers they have ALL stated that they would have paid the bill without question because that would have been the right thing to do.
Collette
Westbank, British Columbia
Canada
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