Tanya Butler, TEP

Tanya’s practice focuses on private client work in estates and trusts, including all aspects of estate planning, probate and administration, and litigation. Tanya acts for trust companies, financial institutions, charitable entities, incorporated professionals, owner-managed businesses, and last—but certainly not least—everyday people. Her work at Touchstone includes wills and estate planning, creation and administration of trusts, asset protection plans, probate avoidance, incapacity planning, and planned giving. Tanya advises executors, trustees, guardians, and people caring for the needs of others under a power of attorney or a personal directive. 

Tanya also shepherds clients through often hotly contested estate litigation, including will challenges, passing of executor’s accounts, fiduciary litigation, will interpretation, and dependants’ relief claims.

Tanya holds the designation of TEP (Trusts and Estate Practitioner) from the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and serves on the executive of the STEP Atlantic Branch. She is the Chair of the Nova Scotia Elder Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), and past Chair of the Wills, Estates, and Trusts Section. She is a member of the Halifax Estate Planning Council, a past lecturer at the CBA National Will, Estate, and Trust Fundamentals Course for Estate Practitioners, and has sat on the Steering Committee of the Estates & Trusts Practitioners’ Forum held at Langdon Hall in Cambridge, Ontario. 

Tanya is from the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, and studied English literature at Acadia University and Queen’s University (Kingston), before taking a law degree at the University of New Brunswick. In her spare time, she is an indifferent runner, a dogged yoga practitioner, and a passionate fan of Scandinavian murder mysteries.