There are a number of ways in which our office gets involved and I should first of all point out that we do not administer all of the estates in the territories. Far from it. There are a large number of estates that are handled by lawyers in the general public. People will visit the lawyer and he will prepare the court documentation, such as we would, and file it with the court so that the affairs are administered directly through a lawyer with the court. The function of the public trustee is to act when there are no family members or friends who have been appointed as executors or administrators who are willing to come forward and take on the responsibility.

When that happens we are usually notified by either a social worker, the R.C.M.P., a nursing station, etc. Quite often, we just get a cheque in the mail and it is made out to somebody who is deceased and somebody said, to send it to our office. When we get notice of somebody dying, we send out a letter of condolence to the family, describing the services of our office along with two forms which allow them to ask our office to administer the estate, if they wish, and also allowing them to provide us with all sorts of information with respect to the deceased person so that we can start administering the estate.