VREP #493 | What Every Couple Should Know Before Buying Property With C. Ryan Chan

This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. It is not intended to cause or induce breach of an existing agency agreement. Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Devan Cooper with the State Podcast. And welcome back to Vancouver Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Scalina. And I'm your host, Matt Scalina. And Matt should stay host, but also realtors with Oakland Realty in downtown Vancouver. So excited for today's guest. We've got Ryan Chen. He's a senior lawyer at Harper Gray in Vancouver. Friend of the show. Really great lawyer on today talking about family law specifically divorce and how that ties into real estate ownership in BC. Really exciting conversation. And the third lawyer, I think in a row maybe or close to in a row. That's right. Yeah. I mean, two things here. One, yeah, we're talking cohabitation agreements, prenups, post-nups, how things gets divided, what you should consider at every stage of your life. And maybe most interesting for myself at least is the great wealth transfer. This applies to many people listening to the show. Whether you're on the side of giving the wealth or on the side of receiving the wealth, how to organize that transfer when it comes to real estate to make sure that that money goes to the people you want and doesn't get caught up in a 26-month fling. Yeah. And you know what? Divorce is not a nice thing to talk about. But I mean, let's be honest. It's half of the marriage is out there roughly end in divorce. So this is, it's good intel for people out there. There's tons of takeaways. But before we get to the conversation with Ryan Matt, we just had a podcast that we've had a ton of feedback on. It's called The Cowichan Decision Explained. What it means for Metro Vancouver homeowners. Of course, we had Sam Adkins on the program. Sam is a lawyer in Vancouver who specializes in Aboriginal law. Really great conversation about The Cowichan Decision. We posted it on YouTube. We've had a few hundred comments already, tons of feedback just in general. Yeah. We just clocked over 9,000 out. We clocked over 9,000 comments on that. Oh, views. Okay. Yeah, views. This reminds me. So one thing we should say is our primary listenership is not on YouTube. We're Spotify and Apple Podcasts is actually our number one. Almost all of our audience. Yeah. It's Apple Podcasts first, Spotify second. We kind of, in and over the years, dabble in YouTube. But we're not consistent in any meaningful way. This kind of reminds me of the time we dabbled in TikTok for about three weeks, and you went viral. Remember that? Yeah. And the reason it was three weeks is because that's how long it took me to get off the couch from being in the field position after I got lit up in the comments so aggressively. But what was the one comment? Trust me, bro. Trust me, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody tackled my appearance, which was nice. That would have been a blow too far. One blow too far. But you know what? It was immediately cancelled the account. We had to cancel the account. I almost got out of creating content. It was a tough one. But this is a little different. This was a weird... The thing about YouTube, as I think a lot of people that are on YouTube realize is the comment section is, what's the best way to put it, Matt? I wouldn't say it's the most intellectual dialogue you've ever seen. Let's put it this way. I learned a couple of things from the comments. One is there's a really serious contingent of people in Canada that believe there's a globalist takeover happening as you speak. That's part of the world that I don't really follow along too closely. Sam mentioned the United Nations undrip. I'm trying to think of what it actually is, United Nations declaration of rights. Leave it for the geniuses on YouTube. Well, here's the thing. The comments, whether you're pro, negative, anti, whatever, undrip is used. Clearly, there's a world in which undrip is being discussed ad nauseam and these guys are all getting fired up about it. That was something that was surprising. And last, we usually have a fairly local audience. This one was definitely picked up by other parts of the country because I feel like the comments, there's a lot of comments that are not from BC. That's for sure. Alberta Separatists were in there. There's a lot of Alberta Separatists. Somebody just wrote some crazy thing and he was from Hamilton. So it's just an interesting experience and one that, who knows, that account might be shut down by the end of the week. But I do feel like that was a great, we did get some great feedback from who, Trevor Koot wrote us, the CEO of BCREA saying, thank you for a measured conversation, which I thought was, I agreed. I think Sam was great. So yeah, check that one out. Yeah, that was content. I think we can all stand behind. So yeah, Matt, let's, before we cut to this conversation with Ryan, of course, we've got the segment that still remains nameless. I think you have a trivia question. I do, Adam. I have a trivia question this week. The October stats came out, signed up for the Live Wire and Vancouver Real Estate Podcast.com, and you'll get those delivered to your inbox. The market is not a lot of change there. I don't want to go into detail, but one thing jumped out at me. And it's a fairly simple question, but one that I'm curious to see if you get. In the stats for single family homes, Adam, and single families have performed definitely the condo market this year. That's for sure. But we're down in Vancouver and single family homes were down. It's, they separated into obviously the West side of Vancouver and East Vancouver, which market the Vancouver West side or East Vancouver or Vancouver East has performed better over the last year, the last calendar year, October 2024 to October 2025. The West side or the East side? Overall. Yeah. Overall. Which has declined less? Because I'll give you a hint. They've both declined in terms of the home price index. Well, Matt, I'm going to go with... But Adam, before we get to that, I want to highlight a sold listing. We highlighted one last week. We'll highlight another one as we're coming into November. This sold this week. We're so excited for the sellers, 3062128 West 40th. Just sold at Carisdale Gardens. We've highlighted this one on the show before. It's over at VancouverReal EstatePodcast.com offered at 1.274900, two bed, two bath plus 10, beautiful home. Like I said, just so excited for the sellers. But let's get back to this trivia question. Okay, Matt. So let's go back to the trivia question. So just so I understand here, you're asking, have prices come down more in the East side or the West side when it comes to the detached market in Vancouver over the last year? Is that what you're asking? Exactly. Over the last year. Over the last year. Oh, boy. I think it's close, but I'm going to say that there's been a bigger drop on the West side only because the entry level, there's more entry level price points on the East side. That's my logic, but yeah, and the people moving through the market right? Yeah, it's those families making the leap. Adam, I would have, I would have agreed with you. That's what I would have guessed. You are wrong though, however, that's the West side times, you know, it's a West side. The West side is down 3.6% over the last year. Get this, the East side is down 7.5%. Wow. East Van is actually doing worse than a lot of markets. A lot of markets if you look at the single family detached specific of stats. The one thing to note though, Adam, if you're an East Van guy, that's how you identify, right? As an East Van guy, over the last five years, East Van is 17.6% up, whereas the West side is up 6.7%. And of course on the 10 year, East Van is basically quadrupled 44.4% up, whereas the West side is up 10.7%. But over this last year, I would say it's pretty clear the West side is weathered the storm better than East Van. Wow. Interesting. So yeah, that's, that's very interesting. I wonder right now, and I mean, this is a question that we've talked about on the show before, but at what point do home prices on the East side get so expensive or the gap narrows so much that the West side just looks like a better opportunity for people? And I think we're probably seeing that this year. I mean, I think a lot of price points have leveled out in certain sub areas of the East side and West side, right? You know what, actually, it's a what goes up must come down kind of logic. I feel like the West side was depressed when East Van was still ripping, right? Or make the press might be strong, but not seeing the same appreciation. So you're right. Maybe there's, that's actually a smart off the cuff take. I like it. Well, without further ado, Matt, let's cut to this conversation with Ryan Chan. Enjoy. Attention realtors, home buyers, and investors, if you missed out on Atlin at Clayton Crest by Zantara Development, here's your second chance. Atlin sold 80% in just three months at him. And because of that success, Zantara is launching Building 2, butte. Located in West Clayton and walking distance to the future SkyTrain station, prices are still low for now, but not for long. Homeowners across the lower mainland are using equity from their current homes to invest in West Clayton ahead of the SkyTrain and the next market upswing. Because when that SkyTrain is complete and the market rebounds, it'll be too late. This, Matt, is how wealth is built. Find out why Atlin sold so fast and register now at butekondos.ca. That's butekondos.ca. Hi, I'm Michael Yu. And I'm Morgan Brown, and we're the founders of Oakland Realty. We have nine offices across British Columbia. Serving all major markets of BC. If you're an agent out there, just like Adam and Matt, who happen to be licensed at Oakland, please reach out to us at oakwin.com/join and type into that message box, the rep, and you'll receive a free gift and a promotion when you meet one of our leaders. Thanks so much, and we're looking forward to meeting with you. See you soon. Okay, we're here with Ryan Chen. He is the senior lawyer at Harper Gray in Vancouver. How are you doing, Ryan? Thanks for taking the time. Yeah, no problem, guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, Ryan, maybe to start, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? I'm a lawyer at Harper Gray. We're in a little plug for my firm. We're on the bigger litigation firms in BC. We're in the Scotia Bank Tower, as you can see. Great view here. I practice primarily in family law, commercial litigation, and employment. So those are the areas I dabble in. I don't try to venture out beyond that. And it's been a good run so far. I've been practicing for about 10 or 11 years. Pretty good stories to tell you. Some of them have to be offline, but that's a little bit about me. Why did you want to... I know you cover a broad variety of areas in law, but why family law? What piqued your interest? Well, you know, when I tell people what kind of areas I practice in, they're always confused. How do you actually work with commercial litigation, which is big companies, swing other companies, breach of contract, all these other things, versus family law, which is the more human side of things. And that's probably the answer right there. I think it's a little more practical. Not everyone has a big corporation that they need to sue someone else. People are getting divorced. People are getting married. So I guess it's called the circle of life of the marriages, I guess, for lack of better words. But there's a lot of opportunity for me to not only use knowledge as a lawyer in court and all that stuff, but a lot of outside alternative dispute resolution options. And sometimes you just got to be outside the box with your thinking. And so there's a human side of it too. You're actually dealing with a person. And to me, when someone comes to you at the lowest time, it's okay, they need your help. You need to kind of really show your empathy and really, they trust you. And they're not paying you to just kind of sit around and listen. You have to actually have some solutions. So I think that that's kind of a privilege. And I've always appreciated that, that the human aspect of family law. You know, it strikes me that there's some similarities in what we do, Ryan, no offense. But, you know, not necessarily that people are buying properties at their lowest point, but it's a very stressful moment in somebody's life. You know, when they're purchasing a large asset or potentially the largest asset they'll own. And you're really, you're kind of, you know, the common refrain in real estate is, you know, you're a therapist, you're a negotiator, you're, you know, blah, blah, blah, how important you are. But in your practice, I would imagine navigating those relationships at, like you said, often the lowest point is, is probably really challenging. Yeah, I would probably, you know, again, I, to full disclosure of the audience, my first home, I actually purchased with the help of a Matt Scalina. So I remember going back and forward singing. That was your high point. Yeah. I had a high point. I remember saying, Matt, is this a good deal? Are you sure? And I think I'd almost ask it in 10 different ways to make sure, are you lying to me? Is this a good deal? Is this not? But yeah, in family law, again, in both sides of it, it's a big deal, regardless of it's a negative or positive. People are getting married. And I always tell people, this isn't an insurance policy. You still have to try your marriage. This is just protecting very specific parts of your assets or your wealth. And yeah, it's, we provide a service. I can't tell you what to do. I can only provide you with the landscape and the different options, the risk. And we try our best. But I remember, you know, from my earlier days of lawyer to now, I do kind of dabble more of, well, this is what I would do. Or you do start giving them a little more guidance and adjust the straight black and white law. I think that's just the maturation myself as a lawyer. But it's, you know, when you see someone, I remember when I bought, when you gave me the keys and all that stuff, it was a pretty memorable day. But there's been times in my career where you kind of get them through this hard time, regardless of if it's a prenup or divorce. And there is some satisfaction knowing that this person goes, oh, wow, that was really nice of you to do that. Or that was great job. And I'm really happy now. And sometimes I get emails and even Christmas cards. And it's, you know, it definitely makes the day go easier for a hard job. Perfect. So, Ryan, when, when couples are buying property, I mean, the last thing they're probably thinking when they purchase together is that a divorce is potentially looming. What are some of the key things that all couples should be thinking about when they buy real estate? Yeah, that's a great question. That's probably the most applicable now. You know, for a full disclosure, I'm a big romantic. I hope everyone lasts together forever. But I wouldn't have a job if that's the case. So, you know, when everyone is hot and heavy and they're in love, the honeymoon phase, no one thinks about, oh, what happens if I get a divorce? And they pay me to say, hey, I hope you guys do make it. But just in case, these are the things you need to think about. And the biggest one is money. Like everything comes down to money in terms of the disputes. You know, if you have a couple that's buying a property, where is the money coming from? Who's putting in the money? Who's going to be paying moving forward? I think if we take a step back, the biggest misconception I've heard at least is that, oh, we've only lived together for X amount or we're not really together or whatsoever. The law isn't as black and white on that. And to be clear, it's two years for common law, which is very akin to a marriage in terms of property rights. So if you were to contribute funds into buying a house, you know, the law treats it differently depending on where you are in your relationship, as well as, you know, what happens down the road. So I think that if you're thinking about buying a house as a couple, and this isn't someone owning a house and someone moving in, buying a house as a couple, I think this best to say, well, where is this money coming from and how we're going to deal with our finances down the road and have a clear idea. Not the most romantic thing, obviously, in a new relationship, but, you know, just obviously just documenting it in some manner, shape or form. Conversations are very hard because then it comes to what he said she says down the road. Having just any kind of written record of this is what I would advise. And so does it actually matter if you have documentation, okay, you know, we've been together three years, we're buying a home. I'm putting in $60,000. She's putting in $40,000. I'll probably take care of 65% of the mortgage costs. She'll take on 35%. Like actually spelling that out, if something goes sideways in the future, does that matter? Or is it just kind of 50/50? Yeah, I think I kind of get where you're coming from here. So, you know, without getting into like the deep deeps of the weeds of family law here, first of all, the law does protect you. I'm going to use some terminology here. I hope it doesn't go over your guys' head. It's family property and excluded property. Those are two things we need to worry about. So excluded property is anything that came in from a third party, a gift from mom or dad, an insurance policy for, you know, a motor vehicle accident, or for example, something that you owned previous. So those are your contributions. So let's say that the man gets $60,000 from dad, the wife gets $40,000 from someone else, another relative, and you put that in together. You know, the law would say, yeah, sure, $60,000 is excluded, $40,000 is excluded for the other party. And when you are to sell the property, let's say, under the circumstances of separation, in terms of the equity, you know, they would get their portion back and then split the rest. But that's just in a hypothetical perfect world, right? Things happened, people remortgaged, people, some people say, well, I spent $60,000 for the mortgage or the down payment, and I'll spend another $50,000 for renovations. There's a lot of different factors. And, you know, the law does provide it by default, but remember, the law is based on evidence. So you don't have to prove it. You have to prove the intention. You have to improve what actually went through bank statements and all that fun stuff. I'm using funds facetiously, obviously. So having a record of it just makes it so much easier than having to pay a lawyer 500 plus an hour to go through that paperwork, to build that argument. If you have this agreement, it's clarity, and it's some bit of certainty, at least on that specific instant or transaction. And, Ryan, you kind of hinted at it before, but how does a law treat married couples versus those couples that are just living together when it comes to property rights? So that's a pretty loaded question, but the simplest answer is that if you reach two years together as a common law couple, you're cohabitating in a marriage-like relationship, at that two-year mark, you're considered to be common law, and your rights crystallize as it can if you were married. But the interesting thing about that, and this is a really bad family law joke, so please laugh at this, Matt and Adam. But if you're in a relationship, a common law relationship, and you're kind of unsure, and you're at 23 months, maybe time to separate, because what happens there is that on, let's see, and I'm not using exact numbers, but on the 24th month of you guys living together in a marriage-like relationship, your rights crystallize retroactively. For example, February 1st, 2024, the couple that we're talking about, or this hypothetical couple, gets together, starts living in a common law relationship, February 1st, 2024. Two years down the road, it's February 1st, 2026, that's two years. Anything that they acquire in the two years previous, the rights crystallize. There would be claims for property entitlement to anything that was accumulated in that two years leading up to that common law mark. Anything that you purchased that you acquired from February 1st, 2024 up to February 1st, 2026, it's as if you were married on the first day you guys get together. But if you were to separate on the 23rd month, there's different claims for unjust enrichment, but in terms of the family law aspects, that's kind of the sticking point. So whenever someone comes in and goes, "Oh, we want to, we don't prenup or we're on a separate or whatsoever," I'm like, "How long have you been together? Really? How long have you been together?" And then not to go into the weeds of this, but if you start talking about, "Well, we were together, but we all had our separate properties. He rented this, he has a house there, and I live here." But if you're spending every single day together, there's also an argument that you're actually living together. So again, there's a lot of things we can talk about. I don't want to go into the weeds. I don't think we have enough time for that. But two years, that's the thing you need to take away from that. Just be careful at the two-year mark. There are a lot of people out there doing mental math. Yeah, exactly. So Ryan, just at the two-year mark, I just want to understand, so if two people meet, they have acquired their, at a point in their life where they've acquired a decent amount of wealth each separately. They're together for two and a half years over that time. They accumulate, let's say, $200,000 in excess, and they split 26 months into the relationship. It's just that amount that they acquired together that is on the table. There's no, the stuff that was acquired previously, it's not fair game to go after that. Well, here's a better example, and I'll use your numbers. Give me some names here. Let's say John and Sally. I don't know why. That makes me a little dated to say those names. But anyways, John and Sally, they get together. And Sally has an apartment in Yale Town, or no, I'm sorry, Matt, you're the king of Mount Pleasant. So we'll talk about Mount Pleasant. Should you have the house in Mount Pleasant? That's an inside joke between me and Matt there. But so let's say that Sally has a house in Mount Pleasant, her equity is $500,000. She meets John, whatever, dating, and they're not together together. But as soon as they're living back and forth, they have their dating, but as soon as John moves in, we'll count that as day one. And then they last for 26 months. So as of day one, Sally's house is worth $500,000. And let's say it goes up to, in the 26 months, it goes up to $750,000. Oh, let's say 800. That's an easier number. Okay? Sure. So minus mortgage payments, minus anything else, appreciation of the property. Let's just keep it really simple. You had a $500,000 asset at day one. 26 months later, it goes up to $800,000. And then they split. Okay. So how would you divide that? The law would say, first you pay off all your mortgages and all that stuff, you sell a property, let's say. And now that there is $800,000 in equity. What would happen in this case, again, this is a very simple example. Sally should get her $500,000 back as a claim. As her excluded property, the increase in value of her excluded property, remember, it went from $500,000 to $800,000. The $300,000 is your family property, which you would divide in half. So when you walk away, John gets $150,000, and then Sally would get $500,000 plus $150,000. Now, that's just the basic of it. But there's also another thing, and I don't want to get into too much of this, but you can see that I'm kind of keeping it narrow, is that there's reapportionment claims. Meaning, is it really fair for 26 months that John gets half of it? He gets half of the $300,000 uptick based on the market or whatsoever? There's plenty of arguments of reapportionment. Maybe that should be 60, 40, 70, 30. Again, that's just down the road. So that's the basis of excluded property and division in property. So, Ryan, what about cohabitation? I'll let it sink in for you guys first. What about cohabitation agreements? Can you walk us through what that means, and then also when somebody should consider getting one? Yeah, that's a common question I get a lot. That's the first question I say is, how long have you been together? It's always better to do these before the two-year mark. The reason why is, you're not really giving up anything for any party. You're not in a common law situation yet by law. You're 20 months in, you're like, "Hey, we're getting close, we're getting pretty serious, and we just want to protect our assets." So yeah, I'd say it'd be great to do that because you're not giving up right that you already have crystallized, say, in 26 months. But that doesn't mean you can't do it after. I have done cohab agreements or even post-nuptial agreements for parties that have been married for two or three years even. We just date things retroactively. It's not fraud. We're just saying, as of this date, the parties agree that this is what happened. We bought a house. The house was this. This person bought a cabin. It's actually a gift from my parents. We just deal with it. The parties can agree to anything they want, anything out of the sun, as long as it's fair and as long as it's clear. That's when you should do that. People do get overwhelmed with cohab day's agreements or any of these kind of agreements because they're like, "Well, what about vials of the pork?" Which is something that you guys aren't going to deal with here, but that's part of any relationship. What about the kids if you have kids and all those other things? Not to mention the limits of these agreements are what happens in five or 10 years. Sometimes the simple answer to this, as life unfolds for everyone, unpredictably, is that we do a very specific property agreement, meaning John and Sally got together. As of this date, John and Sally had this amount of money before they got together. They've accumulated X, Y, and Z. This is how they want to deal with it if they separate. It's a very finite agreement on very specific issues. We're not dealing with vials of the pork, we're not dealing with the kids, we're not dealing with any else. Just one, two, three-care road, five, six, Drake Street, and all those things. Well, I've just listed all the properties I've lived in. Anyways, let's go from there. Ryan, just to be clear, these cohabitation agreements or post-nups or whatever agreements you're talking about, do they override the law? How does that work in relation if somebody is upset and changes their mind or wants to challenge these agreements? Are they ironclad or how does that work? Nothing is ironclad. I hate to break it to the listeners here. In general, people do honor the agreements they enter into. That's my experience, but I will never say that anything is ironclad, full-proof. This is not the way the world works. There's three things, and anyone who's dealt with me in terms of agreements, they say the same three things. You need to have ILA, which is independent legal advice. I would act for one party, and I'd send the other party to another lawyer to get independent legal advice. This way, the parties can't say, "I didn't know I was signing. I was signing under arrest. This was a wedding day, the night before this agreement was thrown on me, and I was stressed and all that stuff." That's the first bit. The second thing is full disclosure. You have to actually disclose all your assets, because you can't actually waive something you don't know. You can say, "Oh, yeah, I don't want any of her property. I don't care. I don't need any of that." Well, if she has nothing, sure. She has $5 million in the bank and a house in the West Bank. Maybe you might consider that agreement. Those are the two things, but what you're talking about is fairness, which is the third prong of all this. Agreements need to be fair on the time of execution. We're talking about duress, the wedding day, cleanup, all those things, how it is executed, but also when it operates, when the parties actually separate. If you have a young couple and they come and say, "Well, this is the house and it's the wife's, and I don't care, and if we break up, she keeps the whole thing," sure. I would say that that agreement has a shelf life of two or three years. But what happens if they have a couple of kids and the wife is really successful and the man just makes more sense to stay at home and five years later, 10 years later, agreement is 10 years old now and they separate and the guy doesn't have a place to live because the house is going to be hers. He hasn't put his mind to the market. He thought we're together forever. He was so in love. He didn't work on his career because he was a stay-at-home dad. How is that fair? That's the idea of when the actual agreement comes into operation. The law is a level that is called significantly unfair. That's why people say, "Well, this is clearly unfair. They didn't expect this," and that's how they challenge these agreements. That's how there's holes in it and say, "Well, this agreement should be thrown out and a judge can either replace portions of it or just throw the whole thing out completely." That's a risk that I always advise all of our clients. I'm just thinking, is it worth or is it common practice to revisit these agreements every five, 10 years with changing situations or is that not something that's done? In terms of updating your agreements, yes. I think that it's not every five or seven years. We've got review clauses in there, but I would say every so often, look at your agreement and review it. Your house that you've put on, it might not be there anymore. You might have sold that and bought a bigger house because you have two more kids. There might be a mortgage and someone paid down the mortgage with a bonus check or whatever. Maybe not a bonus check because that's still family property, but inheritance from an aunt. Things change over the years. I would always say if things, any big financial change or even life change, you have kids now or someone took some time off work or has dialed back retired, any big life change, you should document that. Call your lawyer and just say, "Hey, this has happened since. We ended up buying a new property based on refinancing this." It might be that they say, "Well, no, that's fine. The agreement covers it." Or they say, "Well, it's a penny-wise pound foolish thing. It's going to cost you a couple thousand bucks, but this cabin on Pendere Island is worth a million dollars. Do you really want to mess around with this?" The long and the short of it is that you're not recreating anything. You're just memorializing what's already happened. The parties say, "Yes, this person put an X amount of dollars. We agreed this, so you're no longer going through emails. You're no longer going through text messages. You no longer have to say, "Well, Auntie, she gave X amount of dollars. What if she's passed away? What if she no longer able to say that?" The whole point of this is to avoid litigation and pay the lawyer X amount of dollars on the back end, pay them a smaller amount on the front end just to sort that through so there's no question marks or surprises down the road. Just to be clear then, Ryan, we live in a city where there's a lot of gifted money in the real estate market. People should be upfront when they're considering purchasing, identifying where the source of the down payment, for example, came from. You know, pretty much what I'm saying here, you always run to the situation with the banks where the banks go, "Is this a gift? Do you need to repay this?" You know, again, I'm not trying to say that you need to misrepresent anything, but yes, it's a gift, but it's also, is the property under both names, for example. That would say, "Oh, it's a gift to both of them." I think that is very clear, especially with no one can afford a mortgage on their own, right? It's always two people on title. The banks require that if there's going to be a mortgage under two people. It's always good to have some clarity of, well, yeah, your both names are on title, but once you sell it, the first 50K, the first down payment or whatever, goes to party A or B, and the rest is going to be split. That's how the law is, but again, you're only documenting it to just avoid all the back and forth, any potential conflicts down the road. So it's as simple as that, though. The parents out there, and Adam alluded to it, that we're in a great wealth transfer that's at the start right now, and over the next 10 years is going to take place and ramp up. If you're a parent gifting to a son or daughter who either is at that stage where they have a partner, or they're probably going to meet somebody in the next couple of years, it's just very clearly documenting that gift or portion of the down payment that you provided in order to make sure that that doesn't end up 50-50 out the door in 26 months. Yeah, I think that it's a timing issue, right? So if our hypothetical John, for example, is not with anyone, and he gets a gift from his parents, and it's under his name, and he's by himself, there's no need to do an agreement. It's his. We know the source of the money came from his parents, but at the time he meets Sally, he already has a gift for say a couple months. All it shows is that we have this, he has his property worth X amount of dollars, and that's a finite point in time. What we're really concerned with is if they buy a house together and money comes in from, it's almost simultaneously, right? Dad's giving money to John, John and Sally buy a house together, they go on title, right? It's all one transaction. If there's a break in the timeline, and the money came in a year before, and it's just John living in a house, and then he meets someone, we can actually put the value without saying where it came from. We don't really care where it came from. The best example is they're married and they have their first kid. Grandpa goes, "Oh my gosh, I'm so happy. I want to provide a better life for my grandkids. Here's a million bucks. Go buy yourself a house." That's when we get to really big, well, let's just decide where this million dollars is coming from and how it's going to be characterized. We've talked a little bit about this, Ryan, but prenups. What are prenups? They're obviously difficult things to talk about when you're considering getting married. When do they make sense and what should they cover? Yeah, so a prenup and a cohab agreement, they're just different agreements for different stages of your life, right? Cohab is pretty much short for cohabitation, which is the common law realm, and prenuptual agreements, nuptuals, which is the marriage. All we're talking about is just a couple that's hitting the two-year mark or about to get married. Interesting enough is that if you were cohabitating for a year and then you get married, your entitlement actually is the cohabitation plus the marriage. So just because you didn't hit the two-year mark before you got married, you're going to add that cohabitation time to your length of your marriage. Just not sure if anyone kind of caught that, but that's kind of interesting for property rights. People always going to be, "Oh, well, we only lived together for a year before I got married." I'm like, "Well, you kind of tagged that on." So any property that was acquired during that time, even though you didn't hit the two-year mark before you got married, will get wrapped into that proper division issue there. In terms of, there's a lot of couples out there that have children without getting married, that whole idea of the traditional family, married and have kids off self. That might be a little antiquated, maybe even a little archaic now. So there's no real difference. You've always got the same basic things for you guys in terms of this podcast would be obviously property rights. But just generally, you want to deal with spousal support. You want to deal with certain aspects of your life. We can actually include most things. I've included a dog into one of these agreements before. This is my dog when we got together and it loves me more. I don't say that, but who gets a dog? So again, we can do anything that relates to the party's relationship, except that has to be fair. One thing that I strongly suggest for couples is that you can't have to leave the children out of it. Without going too far off track here is that life is unpredictable. Kids, you don't know if they're going to do dance or hockey or both or whatever. He was going to be doing parenting time. So we cut that part out. Usually, we try to keep it to property division and then spousal support. But again, like I said with your first example, Matt, down before was, what's the shelf life on these agreements? You don't know what's going to happen in five, 10 years. We had crystal ball that you might have five kids. You might have none. You might have none. So it's hard to actually cover every aspect of our lives. We just do the best we can. And lawyers are very clear to say there's limits to our advice. What's your priority house? Great. What's the second priority? The cabin. Great. And the rest of it is kind of cherry on top if you can enforce that. Ryan, let's run something by you here, because we have a lot of mom and pop investors who listen to the show. So people that have acquired two, three properties, four properties, five properties over the years. So a couple divorces, they have no cohabitation agreements. They have no prenup. They own three properties. How is that usually handled? And specifically thinking about they're both on title. Do properties, does it usually lead to a sale? Or are there other ways to approach it? Especially if it's an acrimonious breakup. Oh, so you're talking about a separation here, right? Okay. Yeah. So let me get this right. So you have a couple, and they have a couple of properties under their name, right? Exactly. So I'll add to that a little bit if you don't mind. Let's say that there's a couple of properties, but some are in individual names because they bought that years ago. It's a rental. So there's five properties. There's the family home, which is in joint names, but there's other properties and other people's names for various reasons. Okay. This whole five properties is still under the piggy bank of this is family property. It's subject to division. And then from there, we start dividing things and say, well, where was the excluded property? So if there was the cabin on Pender Island, for example, is one of the five properties, and that was actually inherited from grandma on the man side, he'll say, well, we inherited that from grandma in 2015. At 2015, it was worth X amount of dollars. It's increased since then. It's 2026. So the amount of 2015 would be his excluded property, any growth from 2015 to 2025, sorry, would be split as the family property, just like my example of 500, 800,000, right? That's what we're splitting. And we do that exercise for all five properties. Whether it's from the wife side, she's like, well, this was actually a gift from dad who gave me $100,000 and take the property, $100,000 out, the rest of it split. Now, you don't necessarily need to sell everything. It's just an accounting exercise. You look at all, you have the five properties and then you just say, well, what's an equal split, including arguments of reapportionment and arguments of excluded property. And not to mention, you only get a capital gains exemption on your primary residence. So there might be issues of taxes and all that stuff to split. If it's owned by corporation, those are corporate assets now. There's a lot of things that you need to think about in terms of how you just can't divide it, King Solomon style and just say, all right, it's fine. They're actually not the same. Then you start dealing with properties in the States. And you might say, well, this house in California is worth X, but okay, exchange rate first thing. But then how do you bring the money back over? How do you bring the money across the border? There's all these other things to think about. So that example is pretty loaded, but it's... But I'm just thinking like, so let's just hypothetically say you go through a brutally complex process to figure out, okay, this is, John gets X, Sally gets Y. Is the process then, okay, John doesn't want to sell these. Sally wants nothing to do with John. So John has to either agree to sell them or buy her out. Is that... Exactly. Well, if you don't have the funds to buy her out or get remortgage properties, it's basically you're selling them. Yeah. And part of that is the value too, right? You think of it as just a little piece of... In my boardroom, for example, I have a bunch of coasters, I say, we're not splitting them here and there. It's just an image of that, right? But some people don't want certain things. If we get into the more salacious issues, that's the house that you cheated on me with and with your whatever, right? I don't want that. And you're not going to keep it either. I want nothing sold. There's millions of arguments out there. But in terms of value of these things, not to mention the taxes, just property in BC, the worst is to use the BC assess. I don't say the worst, but it's always six months late, right? Your 2026 is based off of... Or your 2025 is based off of July 31st or July 1st, sorry, of last year. So those are always a little late. You have realtors, and I've called Realtors before, I think I've called you before and said, hey, give me an estimate on this property. And sometimes, clients don't want to spend the money. They think it's a pretty cut and dry. They just want a range from a realtor. So I'll call two realtors and just have a range. And if you want to go to, what the courts really like is they get an appraisal for a property. But again, it's just moving pieces on each side of the ledger. Ryan, family trusts. We hear about them a lot. A lot of people probably don't really fully understand them and when they make sense. Can you talk a little bit about family trusts and when it's worth the complexity? I don't want to give too much advice on this just because I know you have a lot of listeners here and I don't want to be saying anything incorrect. But trusts are very specific. They're a different vehicle for either tax purposes or transferring wealth. I wouldn't just say, oh, it's in the family trust and it's protected. And too bad it's so sad. All my money is in the family trust. Good luck trying to get that. It could be a roadblock for property claims to defeat them, but it's not absolute. Courts will always say, well, what was the purpose of this trust? Is it a sham trust? Is it just to defeat someone's claims? Without going too far into it, you have a trustee. You've got a trust itself and you have some beneficiaries. And depending on how the trust is set up, it could just be used for tax purposes. It could be used for making sure that wealth isn't dissipated foolishly or frivolously. But when it comes to aspects as a divorce, it's really hard to say, well, what's this person's interest in that trust? You have to go through the trust document and so on. But I think for today's purposes is that you cannot say, well, it's in a trust, so I'm home free. That's probably the most I can say on a trust without getting myself into some trouble. Right. Ryan, I know Myers perked up when you said salacious earlier. Do you have a horror story or a cautionary tale or some story where you can change the names over your career that you've dealt with? Oh, okay. I can give you a couple, I guess. Again, I tried to change David's details. But well, my first advice and in turn to just generally is invest in your marriage. That's the best investment you'll make because the forces are not great. That's my first thing to say. I remember there was an issue with, again, actually, this should be quite fitting as I'm thinking off the top of my head. People are accumulating property. Property was the hot asset. It was always just, hey, let's get as much as we can, rent them out. Obviously, you can't be primary residents on multiple properties. I remember there was a family, the parties, they'll call them. They did that. They accumulated a lot of wealth. Everyone wanted a piece of the action. Everyone was like, oh, great, you guys are doing so well. You own two properties and two houses and a couple apartments, renting them all out, you're making bank. Everyone wants a piece of this. It's an uncle's start contributing. They said, well, you know what? Here, taking my money, I just put it towards something. On both sides of it, right? Now you have all these properties. You have all this increase in value. Then, of course, they split up and everyone takes sides. Oh, no, no, no. That was a gift to that person only. That wasn't a gift to you. You can imagine the financial forensics to go through all this, to go through all the layers. Now, of course, when you have a property, you sell it because you want to buy something bigger. The uptick, you see it in another good option. You re-mortgage it. The numbers of this was, I think there was 15 or 20 different properties they had. No one knows who owns this, if the company owned it, did a trust own it, where does the money come from, and who lived in it? Was it just for state purposes? One thing that people do is that they put, for example, a bank account. They put in someone else's name, or if you put a joint title for just to bypass probate, it's just the right of survivorship, right? Someone passed away. They should go through the person who's left over and throwing out all those things. It was just like a nightmare to go through that. I'll add another wrinkle to that, is that they separated, but they continue to live together for the sake of the children. One party actually had more money, so they continued this investment, and they continued the formula of let's keep buying more property, buying more property. The issue with that is that now you've got two issues. When did the parties actually separate? You deal with post-separation assets a little differently in post-separation contributions. Not only is, when did the party separate? That was the first issue you had to deal with. There was a trial just on that issue, and then once you figure out the date, then you have to figure out unraveling, okay, so where does the money come from? Who owns what? If you want to make this even worse, is that once you figure out where all the property goes, what's everyone's income to actually figure out spouses support? That was just the biggest mess in the world. If you want to say, maybe we should get an agreement done, think of that. Also, they still have to have breakfast together, which seems even more incomprehensible in that situation. On a more human side of things, people do certain things that you go, "Oh my God, that's crazy," but when you get kids involved, obviously that most people say that's your first priority. The law even says that it's the best thing that the children is the paramount test. Some people do stay together for the kids, and in terms of separation agreements on the flip side of things, and when you're about to sell a property or whatever, or trying to figure out your end date, a very interesting thing that people don't realize is that because you can't live anywhere else, because rent's hard, because everyone's in a financial crunch, if there's not the common example, but even if you're in a wet bedroom and you're even sharing the same bed, let's go to the extreme here, you could still technically be separated. You're just for lack of space still together. That's a very interesting concept that I kind of had to deal with. Just got a little tidbit here and there. I see I got to talk a little about one. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, well, no, I was just going to say one more thing, because we did have Richard Bell on the show recently talking about estate planning, Ryan. The general theme was that the young people don't start thinking about these things early enough in life, and it's not something that you want to leave. Is there a similar line of thinking when it comes to maybe not planning divorce, but for making sure that you're documenting your finances in your mind? Is this something that all people should be considering? I would say yes and no. If you are a young couple that got together and you both have ... I'm going to use this sensitively, basically nothing. You're out of school and you've got some student loans and you're just living life, building the dream and working hard, and then you get your first apartment, and it's all pretty much equal. If you came to me, I'd say, no, don't waste your money. There's no point. Your claims are going to be what they are. There's nothing coming in. There's no like, "Oh, you need to do this. Everyone has to do a will." Yes, that's true. Not everyone has to do a prenup or a co-operation agreement. It's only if, again, a certain transaction happens, a gift from a third party, money came in from a settlement from an insurance claim or whatsoever, all those things. When there's something to fight about at the end, and you want to say, "This is a excluded property," that's when I would start thinking about that. But for the common couple, no, I don't think that's necessary. People need to realize that you can do these at any stage. Just because you're married doesn't mean you can't do one a year later or two years later if you remember something. Yeah, if life was so predictable, it'd be great to get this done and just hammer all the things, but I would just do it if it's necessary, again, for the significant change that would happen in your life financially. It makes a lot of sense. Well, Ryan, we do have this segment called The Five Wire, five light-hearted questions that we end every show with. Can you stick around for that? Sure. I hope I give better answers than I have. Here's what's incredible, Adam. These condos actually cash flow. When's the last time we could say that about new construction in the lower mainland? With these entry-level prices, the numbers actually work for investors. And you're in the heart of downtown Langley, surrounded by trendy cafes, artisan bakeries, and parks. The area is experiencing incredible growth and new development. Yeah, the location is absolutely key. Jethro is steps from the future Langley Sky Train Station. Get in before that transit connection transforms the area, because once that Sky Train arrives, you're looking at direct connections across the lower mainland. Jethro is a Whitetail Holmes project. Whitetail Holmes has over 25 years of experience with quality construction and finishes that exceed expectations. We're talking vibrant interiors, expansive windows, and thoughtful design. For realtors listening, they are offering amazing cooperative incentives. This is a rare opportunity where the fundamentals make sense. Affordable entry, cash flow potential, and positioned for major transit infrastructure in all around wind. Register at jethrocondos.ca. That's J-E-T-H-R-O-Condos.ca. Jethrocondos, distinctly Langley, uniquely yours. Question number one is one book that you've read recently that you would recommend for our listeners. You know, this is going to be a really bad answer because I don't read any books because I read too much every day. I'm going to have to pass on that one. It heard a little bit about me. I've been reading probably this one book for the last 10 years. I'm a big fan of the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. The problem with that is that these books are so loaded with different terminologies and references that as a lawyer, I'm like, "This doesn't make any sense. I'm cross-dressing every page." It's taken me years to get through this book. So reading is not, at least fiction is not good for me. So I'm still on page. I don't know what I want to say, but I will tell you guys when I finish that book. So reading is fiction is not my strong suit. It's legal documents more than anything else. I haven't read a book in a while. I don't, to be honest. Doesn't sound enjoyable. We can cut this part out, right? We can cut this part out, right? In the last few years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? At least, I know, Ryan, you're a big athlete, but I don't know if there's anything to do with it. I don't want to load this up. Doing family law, you definitely get a lot of perspective on certain things. People don't come to my office going, "Hey, I got a divorce." It's a gradual process. "I'm getting a divorce. This is such a crappy time in my life. Oh, I'm so better off without it." It's a very gradual thing. And not to make this all super warm and fuzzy, but I think for my life, as Matt, I used to play pretty high-competitive sports and all that stuff, is I'm getting older and your focus has changed. I think the one belief or behavior or even habit that's changed the most has just been grateful. I can still run. I can still play sports. I have a pretty good job. There's always going to be someone with more or less. We're all about the same age, I think, and now we're all looking at the second half of our lives. I'm less focused on, "Oh, I should have done this. I should have bought Bitcoin. I should have bought NVIDIA or Tesla or whatever it is," and say, "You know what? I'm still doing pretty good now. I'm grateful for what it is and just looking forward to the next 40, 50 years and just trying to make the best of that and appreciating the journey, I think. That's just being grateful, I think, is probably the thing I've learned the most. That's a great answer. I thought you were going to say pickleball. People who know me and play pickleball with me know that I am a very enthusiastic player. We'll call me a diamond the raffle. We'll put it that way. We'll do an update next year. Okay, question number three. What have you been binge-watching lately or a movie recommendation? I don't watch a lot of TV. In fact, I don't have any subscription, to be honest, to any Netflix or anything like that kind of stuff, but I do watch this one show, and I've watched it probably every episode since 2001. It's called "Pardoned Interruption." It's a sports talk show with two guys. One is Tony Kornheiser, a 70-year-old Jewish man who grew up in New York, and a guy named Michael Wilborn, who's a big Chicago guy. He's African-American descent. You get the back and forth. They argue about everything, but there's a race aspect, a socioeconomic aspect, and just like they've lived it. They're like, "Oh, when Babe Ruth did this." Oh, man, not Babe Ruth, but they were there to actually give live commentary back in the day. I found that show quite interesting. Movies, that's a hard one. Too big to fail. That's a good one. I'm not sure if you guys watched that, but it's about the financial crisis of everyone buying houses. It's along the lines of the big short, and what's that one with margin called as movies? I'm a big Marvel fan, so Endgame was a really good one for me. That's kind of my time. I'll probably finish off with a Notting Hill and Fast and Furious. I think I knew the Notting Hill was coming for some reason. Not surprising. You did say you're a romantic. Favorite band or music, Ryan? Oh, man, these are the worst. Okay, I'm in '90s, baby. 90s, 2000s hip-hop R&B is always going to be a soft spot for me. '80s love ballads. I'm a big fan. I did my Tri-Sect. I think I told you about this, Matt. I went to Rod Stewart, Elton John, and Brian Adams, so I went to all three concerts. I finished my '80s Tri-Sect. I don't mind a little Taylor Swift here and there. Anything really that you can bob your head to and sing along. We should probably cut that part out too. R&B and romcoms, we better not give your contact out or else you're going to have a lot of DMs here. Maybe last but not least, something that you've purchased for under $1,500 that's had a positive impact on your life. Probably my subscription to the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast. We all pay $1,500 for this, right? That's what I understand, right? $1,500. I'd probably say my flight to Japan in the end of the year. That was really neat. It's something that just kind of was a spur of the moment. I had a little bit of a gap in my work that just got up and left. It was a very spur of the moment. It was probably one of the coolest trips I've been on recently. I had to change my life. Yeah, sure. We'll say yes. It was a good trip. We'll add one more. Highlight from Japan. Highlight from Japan. There's this place in Nara. I think it's in Kyoto where you can ... Whoever's been there, they know what I'm talking about. It's this deer, a reindeer park. Or not reindeer, it's just deers. You literally feed them and they're so accustomed to people that they bow to you. For some reason, I was just too eager. I would just jump in around trying to find a deer to talk to or to hang out with. They all ran away for me. Finally, this one deer kind of felt sorry for me and just kind of followed me around. The highlight was just having this deer that fall around and was just great. It was just, "Oh, wow. We're buddies now, right?" On that note, I also ... I'm a big fan of capybaras. So I did go to a capybara cafe, which was kind of neat. So yeah, those were kind of neat. I did all the other touristy things like the giant forest, the temple, the sumo resting lot and stuff. But I think the deer that ... I didn't get the contact information, but the deer that followed me around for 20 minutes was probably my favorite. I would have never guessed bowing deer would have been the highlight of the trip. I'm trying to separate myself from all the typical answers here. Well, Ryan, thanks so much for taking the time today. If people want to get in touch, how can they follow along or reach out to you? Yeah, I know anything that you guys want to talk to me about in terms of legal related. I'm happy to chat about most things, but if you want to contact me for legal related stuff, you can just go to our website, harpergray.com. That's g-r-e-y. And my email is [email protected]. I'm pretty easy to find. Ryan Chan Lawyer is probably the easiest way to do it. And then you'll find me. And then, yeah, if there's anything they can help you out with, then I'm happy to chat. Fantastic. Thanks again. So there you have it, folks. Our discussion with Ryan Chan, Senior Lawyer over at Harper Gray. Really enjoyed that conversation, Matt. Biggest takeaway for me? Don't get divorced. Yeah. Stay in it. "Invest in your relationship" was what Ryan said. That's a good one. That's a good one. "Sage advice" or "Invest in your marriage" I think was the actual line. But yeah, no, but lots of takeaways. I feel like documenting things is, of course, just that first and foremost paramount in any relationship that's a little complicated. But yeah, lots to think about there and super happy that Ryan took the time to speak with us. That's for sure. Yeah. For sure, Matt. And before we cut for the day, what else do we have? What else do we have, Adam? We have Vancouver Real Estate Podcast.com. This is our website where all things real estate related live. Of course, we have PCS, which is our buyer's resource. Of course, we have the sole plan, which is our seller's resource. We send out the live wire so you get on that list for sure. But what I want to say, Adam, is we're kind of moving this fall into really useful content, I think, for lots of takeaways, talking to really smart people. And if you're finding it useful, all we ask is that you like or review or share the podcast with somebody you think might get value. Like I said, we're trying to grow, as always, and we appreciate people helping that way. That's for sure. So that's our one ask for the day. And Matt, if people want to get in touch with you, you can try me at any time, 778-847-2854 or Matt at vancouverrealestatepodcast.com. Or you can try me at 778-866-4574 or Adam at vancouverrealestatepodcast.com. And of course, we got that nonpartisan Kokomo line info at vancouverrealestatepodcast.com. We'll have a great week and we're back here with another great episode next week. A couple people we're talking to, we've got a fantastic financial planner coming on the program who's going to talk about how to diversify with real estate and your stock portfolio and plan for your future and your retirement. We've got Professor Andrey Pavlov coming back on the show from SFU. I'm so excited for that. And we've got some other amazing shows coming up. So so many great episodes coming for the balance of the year. So stay tuned. Take care. [Music]