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Court Testimony From Experts @ BEC

Excerpt from Millott v. Reinhard

Application to the Present Case

[337] The Plaintiffs' expert assumed a personal expenditure rate (the expenses discussed in Brooks) of 35 per cent, for no other reason than that is the rate used by the Court of Queen's Bench (and not disturbed by the Court of Appeal) in Duncan No.2. The Defendants' expert, Brown, proposed a "life cycle approach", which has personal living expense deductions of: 35 per cent with two children at home; 44 per cent with one child at home; and 50 per cent with only Lauretta remaining at home. This is based on the phrase in Brooks that a deceased's share of joint living expenses decreases as the number of family members increases (Brooks (C.A.) at para. 28). The Defendants submit that the life cycle approach is more realistic than a single figure approach.

[338] Brown calculated these figures by taking the deceased's personal consumption rate and adding the deceased's joint share of family expenses. She did this for a four-person, three-person and two-person household, to reflect the number of children living at home at various times (C.L. Brown, "Duncan v. Baddeley: A Case Comment", (1999) 37 Alta.L.Rev. 772 at 797-803). At 802, she set out the rationale for varying the numbers at different stages of life:

In practice, family size normally varies over the life cycle, and given that deductions for personal living expenses are based on personal consumption rates (which vary by family size) and the deceased's proportionate share of fixed and variable family expenditures (which would affect the deceased's proportionate share), the deduction for personal living expenses in a single case may be fluid over the course of the deceased's projected life cycle.