SK Court of Appeal rejects trust claim in estate dispute due to expiration of limitation period

In a recent estate dispute, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejected a trust claim due to the expiration of the limitation period.

The dispute in Walker v Hunter, 2024 SKCA 34 involves the inheritance of farmland that once belonged to David Hunter, who passed away in 1998, and his wife, Gloria Hunter, who died in 2007. The couple, farmers in the Kamsack area of Saskatchewan, left six children behind. Four of these children, Lynda Walker, Brian Hunter, Murry Hunter, and Velvet Clark, were appellants in this case, while one, Bruce Hunter, was among the respondents, along with Diane Giesbrecht, Lorne Hunter’s surviving former wife, and Donald Ernst and David Clark, executors of Lorne Hunter’s estate.

The dispute centred around the entitlement to the farmland after the heirs found that Bruce, as the last surviving joint tenant, acquired title to all lands previously held jointly with his parents and brother Lorne. Bruce later transferred this title to himself and Diane Giesbrecht as joint tenants. The appellants filed an originating application alleging wrongful disinheritance by Bruce, asserting that David had intended each of his six children to receive an equal share of the land. They claimed Bruce held the land in trust and that he and Diane had been unjustly enriched.

Bruce, Diane, and Ernst applied for the application to be struck out based on the action being outside of the limitation period. The chamber's judge found no evidence of fraudulent concealment by the appellants and concluded the two-year limitation period had expired, thus ordering the originating application to be struck.

The appellants appealed, arguing that the chambers judge erred in her interpretation of fraudulent concealment under The Limitations Act and by dismissing the entire application, including the claim for an accounting. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal regarding the trust claim, upholding the finding that the limitation period had expired without evidence of wilful concealment to suspend the limitation period.

However, the appeal court found that the chambers judge had erred in striking the application in its entirety without considering the claim for an accounting of David and Gloria's estates. This part of the appeal was allowed, highlighting a crucial distinction between the trust claim and the request for an estate accounting. The court ultimately underscored the complexities of estate distribution and the significance of limitation periods in legal actions related to inheritance disputes.