Tabitha Veinot joins Dumke MacLeod!

Happy new year to our clients and colleagues!  We are pleased to announce that as of January 1, 2013, we have been joined in our practice by our new associate Tabitha Veinot.  Tabitha has knowledge and experience in family law, real estate, wills & estates, and civil litigation.  Check out her bio on our ‘about’ page for more info.

Christmas Hours

The Christmas season is upon us, and we will be closing the office for the holidays on Friday, December 21, 2012 at 12:30pm, and re-opening on Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

That’s a long break, but we will be checking our email periodically, so emergency appointments may be available if necessary.

Hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!

Well Logs Database

A co-worker recently showed me an interesting site that’s hosted by the Department of the Environment.  It’s called the Well Logs Database:

            http://www.gov.ns.ca/nse/welldatabase/wellsearch.asp

It’s searchable by civic address, and it provides information about well locations, geology and well construction, well depth and yield, from 1920 to the present, throughout Nova Scotia.  While the information is not warranted to be accurate, it could be a helpful resource for estimating the age of a residence, locating older wells on a property, or researching the typical well characteristics for an area.  The User Manual for the database states that if you have questions regarding a specific well, you should verify the information by obtaining a copy of the original well log.  Still, it’s kind of a neat site for curious home-owners, or prospective home-buyers, and it’s free!

Remembrance Day

Our office will be closed on Monday November 12, 2012, since the banks, courts, and government offices will be closed in lieu of Remembrance Day.  My thoughts and thanks go out to Canada’s soldiers and veterans, and all of those honouring Remembrance Day this Sunday.

Highway 325

I had the chance this week to drive to the Caledonia area on client business.  My usual routines tend to keep me pretty close to Highway 103, so it was a treat to drive through communities that I ordinarily only get to see on the Property Online mapping or the Crown Land Index Sheet (available here  http://www.gov.ns.ca/natr/land/grantmap.asp).  There are some beautiful farms along that highway- I sometimes forget how much agricultural activity there is in Lunenburg County and Queens County.

Fall is in the air

We’ve had a busy and productive summer season at Dumke MacLeod, and as we transition into cooler weather and shorter days I’m hoping to carve out more time to post on this blog. 

Last Friday, I attended the Canadian Bar Association’s “Tips and Traps for Non-Tax Professionals” professional development day in Halifax.  I found it to be a very useful session, with tips and suggestions for business organization, shareholders’ agreements and estate planning.  I particularly enjoyed the presentation by Todd King of Deloitte and Blair Hodgman of Allen & Hodgman, “Don’t Let Uncle Sam Spoil your Tea Party: The Need-to-Knows about Cross-Border Taxation.”  I will definitely be encouraging the American citizens in my life to keep up with their IRS filing requirements.

In other news, the Fall 2012 issue of the Society Record, (the print publication of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society), contains an interview with Kathryn entitled “Significant Life Changes, Meeting Transition with Dignity and Professionalism.”  Our thanks go to NSBS Communications Officer Marla Cranston, for her thoughtful questions, and interest in Kathryn’s story.

Amendments to the Change of Name Act

On November 8th, 2011 the Nova Scotia Minister of Services and Municipal Relations tabled a Bill to amend the Change of Name Act. The new Act proposes the following:

Clause 5
(a) requires that a person whose name is to be changed be fingerprinted by an authorized agency;
(b) requires that the fingerprints be forwarded to the RCMP to enable it to link the person’s present and proposed name if the person has a criminal record;
(c) prevents the Registrar from approving a person’s name change unless the person’s fingerprints have been provided to the RCMP;

I contacted my local MLA Gary Ramey by email pointing out that these amendments marginalize transgendered persons further if records are retained after they are submitted. Today, several days later, I received a phone call from Gary Ramey and the Minister of Justice Ross Landry with whom I spoke for almost half an hour to discuss my concerns regarding the bill.

I was told by the Minister that records are not retained to track persons who have had a name change, but that the records are destroyed immediately after they have been compared to the database of convicted persons. The fingerprint records of those who have no criminal record will be destroyed completely, the fingerprint records of those who have a criminal record will have the name change attached to them and will be retained.

I was very impressed with the response to these concerns.

Credit Card Payments Now Accepted

At the request of our clients, we have now set up an Interac/Credit Card terminal for payment of legal accounts. (We accept debit cards, Mastercard and VISA).  We can also issue invoices through Paypal for clients who would prefer to pay online.  If you are a client, and would prefer to receive future invoices via email, please feel free to let us know.

Thanks to all

Friday’s conference “Challenges and Opportunities in Rural Practice” was a great success, and we want to thank the law students, organizers, (including our facilitator Matt Homann), and participants for a day of thought-provoking discussion.  The Best Western did a great job with the catering and conference space as well.  There is talk of the conference becoming an annual event, hosted in a different county each year.  We hope that other participants enjoyed it as much as we did, and that they took something from the day that will enhance their practice for themselves and their clients.

Challenges and Opportunities of Rural Practice in Nova Scotia

In the midst of a busy Fall, Kathryn has also been hard at work with the executive of the Lunenburg County Barristers’ Association organizing a conference for rural practictioners, “Challenges and Opportunities of Rural Practice in Nova Scotia,” scheduled for next Thursday and Friday, November 3rd and 4th, 2011, at the Best Western in Bridgewater. (http://fallconference2011.blogspot.com/) 

 Topics for discussion will include operational models for rural practice in the 21st century, access to justice in rural communities, and attracting and retaining young talent in our communities.

We are looking forward to a lively exchange of ideas with practioners from across the province, and insight from our conference facilitator, Matt Homann.