No. It doesn’t. Some of the largest assets a person owns pass straight to a named individual — skipping the will, the executor, and probate entirely. Here’s what that means for the family left behind.
Most people assume the will is the master document: whatever it says, goes, and the executor divides everything according to its terms. For many assets, that’s true. But two important categories bypass the will altogether, passing directly to a specific person no matter what the will says. When families don’t realize this, the result is confusion, hurt feelings, and sometimes a fight.
The two ways assets bypass a will are:
Doorway one: assets with a named beneficiary
Certain accounts let the owner name a beneficiary directly: RRSPs, RRIFs, TFSAs, LIRAs, workplace pensions, and life insurance policies. When the owner dies, these pay out directly to the named person — outside the estate, without passing through the will or the executor’s hands.
The will does not control these assets. A will that leaves “everything equally to my three children” does not override an RRSP that names only one of them, or a life insurance policy that still lists an ex-spouse from twenty years ago. The designation wins.
That last example is not academic. While it doesn’t occur often, we have had cases where it has happened. It’s very frustrating for families. Designations get made once and are sometimes forgotten — an ex-spouse never removed, a beneficiary who has since died, a form filled out long before a new will was signed. The paperwork sitting in an insurer’s file can defeat everything the will was meant to accomplish, and nobody discovers it until it’s too late.
Doorway two: jointly owned assets
The second doorway is joint ownership with right of survivorship — most commonly a joint bank account or a jointly owned home. When one owner dies, the survivor automatically takes the whole thing, again outside the estate and outside the will.
This one comes with a caveat. Aging parents often add an adult child to a bank account “for convenience,” so the child can help pay bills. Many believe the question then becomes: when the parent dies, does that child keep the account by survivorship, or are they holding it in trust for the estate, to be shared among everyone?
For an adult child added to a parent’s account, the law generally starts from the assumption that the money is being held for the estate and it should be included in the application for probate. If a parent genuinely means for one child to keep an account, that intention should be written down clearly, not left to be argued over later.
Bank staff often add to the confusion. To them, it’s a joint account. They will let the child access the funds as though they own them. This is why joint accounts are not frozen, while accounts held in the name of the parent only will be frozen once you notify the bank the parent has passed.
The tax surprise nobody expects
Here’s a wrinkle that catches families. Even though a registered plan like an RRSP or RRIF passes directly to its named beneficiary, the tax on that plan usually lands on the estate.
When someone dies, their RRSP or RRIF is generally treated as cashed out and added to income on their final tax return — and that tax bill is owed by the estate. So you can end up with one person receiving the full RRSP while the beneficiaries named in the will absorb the tax on it. If the plan’s beneficiary and the will’s beneficiaries aren’t the same people, that can feel deeply unfair, and it can leave the estate short of cash. (There are exceptions — such as a plan rolling over to a surviving spouse or a dependent — that change the picture.)
A Manitoba note: no probate fees to “avoid”
A lot of joint-account planning in other provinces is driven by a wish to keep assets out of probate and dodge probate fees. In Manitoba, that motivation largely disappeared: probate fees were abolished in 2020. There’s no estate administration tax here to save by titling assets jointly — which means joint ownership set up purely to avoid a fee that no longer exists can create real problems (the trust dispute above, or exposure to a co-owner’s creditors or divorce) for no offsetting benefit. Any arrangement built around the old goal is worth revisiting.
What this means for you
If you’re an executor, don’t assume the will is the whole story. Build a full list of assets and how each one is held — whether it carries a named beneficiary, whether it’s jointly owned — because those details, not the will, decide where a large share of the estate actually goes.
And if you’re doing your own planning, this is the moment to make sure your designations and joint arrangements still match your will and your wishes. A stale beneficiary form is one of the easiest estate problems to prevent and one of the hardest to fix after the fact.
Make sure your will and your paperwork agree — while you still can.
Checking that beneficiary designations and joint accounts actually line up with the will, before there’s any pressure to sort it out, is one of the core steps in our Executor Readiness Review. It’s a short conversation now that can prevent a painful surprise later.
TLR Law Office — Winnipeg | St-Boniface · St-James · South Winnipeg · Henderson
This article is general information about Manitoba estate law and is not legal advice. Every estate is different; for advice on your situation, please speak with a lawyer.
