The Sound of Music is one of my favourite movies. It’s up there with The Princess Bride.

In the sound of Music, one of the scenes has Maria teaching the children how to sing, with a song that opens: “Let’s start at the very beginning”.

I was going to start this column with those opening words, but realized there might be a generation or two who have never seen the movie, which was released in 1965. It’s unlikely, however, that any of those young folks would be reading this column.

This is the first in a series where I hope to demystify the various steps of applying for an estate grant.

An estate grant is a court order giving authority to one or more people (executors or administrators) to deal with the deceased person’s assets. It’s the equivalent of a power of attorney, but after death.

Most people refer to it as “probate”, though depending on whether there’s a will or whether a named executor is making the application, it might technically be called a grant of probate or a grant of administration.

The start of the process is taking all reasonable steps to search for deceased’s last will. It’s an important first step, particularly given British Columbia law says that any document, physical or even electronic, can be “cured” to be a deceased’s last will if the court........

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