Editorial Policy

Editorial purpose

Onyx Law publishes practical writing about contested estates in British Columbia. Our readers usually arrive when something has already gone wrong — a will reads unfairly, an executor stops returning calls, a sibling is hiding records, a parent’s last signature looks coerced. The site is built for people in that spot, not for lawyers researching a brief.

Everything we publish stays inside one lane: estate litigation under BC law. That covers wills variation claims under section 60 of the Wills, Estates and Succession Act (WESA), challenges to a will’s validity, undue influence and capacity disputes, executor and trustee accountability, beneficiary rights, and fraud that surfaces during an estate fight. We don’t write probate how-tos or estate administration walk-throughs, because we don’t take that work right now and we won’t send readers down a path we can’t help with.

What we publish

Our content sits in a few buckets:

• WESA wills variation explainers: section 60 standards, who can file, time limits, what a “just and equitable” provision looks like in BC case law
• Will challenges: undue influence, lack of capacity, suspicious circumstances, improperly executed wills
• Executor and trustee disputes: removals, passing of accounts, breach of fiduciary duty, hidden assets
• Beneficiary rights: entitlement to information, accounting, disclosure of estate documents
• Undue influence basics: what the doctrine actually requires, what evidence BC courts look at
• BC case explainers: plain-English breakdowns of notable BC Supreme Court and Court of Appeal estate-litigation decisions

We don’t publish probate filing guides, grant of probate walk-throughs, estate tax checklists, or general estate administration content. If a reader needs that, we’ll point them to the BC Probate Registry or a probate practitioner — but we won’t pretend it’s our wheelhouse.

Who writes our content

Three groups touch our writing:

• Onyx Law lawyers, who set the legal direction on every piece and sign off on the reasoning
• Estate-litigation paralegals on our team, who handle background research and citation accuracy
• Outside legal writers we’ve vetted, who draft longer pieces under a lawyer’s brief

Every published article carries the name of a real human reviewer on our team. There’s no AI-only content on this site, and there are no anonymous “legal team” bylines. If you want to know who stands behind a piece, scroll to the reviewer block at the bottom.

How we research

We work from primary sources first:

• The Wills, Estates and Succession Act, especially section 60 (wills variation) and the validity rules in Part 4. We cite the current consolidated version on BC Laws, not third-party summaries.
• BC Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions through CanLII
• Law Society of British Columbia practice resources and notices to the profession
• BC Probate Registry rules where they cross into a litigation question, for example caveat practice or contested grants

When a secondary source helps — a respected practice text or a peer-reviewed article — we’ll cite it, but only after we’ve checked the underlying statute or case ourselves. We don’t quote anonymous “experts,” and we don’t paraphrase a court decision without linking to it.

Review process

No article goes live without a BC-licensed estate litigation lawyer on our team reading it end to end. The reviewer checks three things: that the law is stated correctly, that every statute citation matches the current BC Laws version, and that the piece doesn’t drift into legal advice for any one reader’s situation.

Cases get re-checked against the version on CanLII the week before publish, since BC decisions occasionally get appealed or distinguished while a draft sits in queue. If the reviewer can’t sign off, the piece doesn’t go up. We’d rather miss a publish date than push something half-correct on a topic where readers are already in pain.

Corrections policy

If we get something wrong — a misquoted statute, a misread case, an out-of-date rule — we fix it and say so. Material corrections get a dated note at the top of the article describing what changed and when. Typos and small clarifications get fixed quietly.

Spotted a problem? Email editorial@onyxlaw.ca. We aim to respond within five business days. If a correction is needed, the fix usually goes live within the same window.

Update cadence

BC estate law moves slowly, but it does move. Our schedule:

• Statute-driven articles: reviewed once a year, and immediately on any WESA amendment
• Case-driven articles: reviewed quarterly against current CanLII results
• Named-case explainers: updated whenever a BC Court of Appeal or Supreme Court of Canada decision shifts the rule we’ve explained
• Procedural pieces tied to litigation (limitation periods, filing steps): checked against the Supreme Court Civil Rules each January

Every article footer shows the last review date so readers can see whether they’re reading something current.

Talk to us

Questions about a piece, a correction request, or a tip on a BC estate-litigation decision we should cover — send it to editorial@onyxlaw.ca, or use the contact form at onyxlaw.ca/contact. We read everything that comes in.

For legal matters specifically, please don’t send case details over email until we’ve opened a file. Reach our intake team through the same contact form and they’ll route you properly.