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Infinite Banking in Maple Ridge

Some households are planning for a child who will need support after both parents are gone. That is a real and specific problem, and it has purpose-built tools that come before anything discussed on this site.

Between the river and the mountains

Maple Ridge runs from the Fraser up into the Golden Ears, with Alouette Lake and the provincial park behind and Haney and Port Haney along the water. The Pitt Meadows dyke lands lie west, the Kanaka Creek greenway cuts through the middle, and the town has grown quickly as households moved east for space they could afford.

Among those households are families planning around a lasting need, and they deserve a page that does not treat them as a variation on everyone else.

The order, and it is not the usual one

If you are planning for a child or adult family member with a disability, the sequence below comes before any conversation about the strategy this site describes. A practitioner who moves to a policy without walking through it has not understood the problem.

The Disability Tax Credit comes first, because it is the gateway. Without it, the main federal savings vehicle is not available. Application is through the Canada Revenue Agency with a medical practitioner's certification, and families are often surprised to learn it can be claimed retroactively for prior years.

Then the Registered Disability Savings Plan. The RDSP attracts federal Canada Disability Savings Grants and, for lower-income families, Bonds that require no contribution at all. Those government contributions are the reason this comes first: no insurance contract can match money the federal government adds to an account. Grants and bonds have annual and lifetime limits and there are rules about when withdrawals can be made without repaying them, so the plan needs to be set up with someone who knows it.

Then provincial benefit preservation. British Columbia's disability assistance has asset and income rules, and an inheritance received directly can disqualify a person from support they depend on. That is what a Henson trust exists to prevent: a discretionary trust where the trustee, not the beneficiary, controls distributions, so the assets are generally not treated as the beneficiary's for benefit purposes. This is drafting work for a lawyer who does it regularly, and it is not a form.

Only then does life insurance enter, and when it does its role is usually clear: funding the trust at the death of the parents so the support continues. That is an insurance question with a defined amount, and it is answerable.

Where the strategy on this site sits in that picture

Honestly, near the end. This strategy asks for premiums maintained without interruption for decades and returns access to capital over a long horizon. A household already funding an RDSP, paying for therapies and equipment, and holding a reserve for a future that has no retirement date is unlikely to have surplus beyond that, and should not be persuaded that it does.

Cash surrender value stays below cumulative premiums for many years, commonly more than a decade, so an early exit is a loss. Dividends are not guaranteed: they are declared annually by the insurer's board based on the participating account's experience, and the scale can be revised downward. Neither of those features suits money that may be needed on no notice.

Never name a person with a disability directly as beneficiary of a policy without legal advice. A payment received directly can do exactly the damage the trust was built to prevent, and a designation is easy to make and hard to undo.

British Columbia rules and what to bring

Insurance in British Columbia is regulated by the Insurance Council of British Columbia, and a professional here holds a Life Insurance Agent licence. Verify it in the Council's public register and ask how the person is paid. British Columbia has no title protection statute of the kind Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have enacted.

Nothing on this page is advice, and nothing on it is legal or tax advice about trusts or benefit eligibility, which are specialist areas where general guidance is worth very little. No assessment has been made of anyone reading it, and the author is not a neutral party: he is licensed to sell the contracts this strategy uses and is paid a commission when one is placed. Ask any practitioner directly whether they have worked with RDSPs and Henson trusts before. It is a fair question and the answer tells you a great deal.

One closing word on the question parents ask last when it should come first: who will manage all of this once we are gone? A trustee has to be someone likely to outlive you, who understands the role and has agreed to it. Naming a sibling your own age solves the problem for twenty years rather than fifty. Many families name a successor trustee, or a trust company for the duration, for exactly that reason.