B.A. (King's) 1969, LL.B. (Queen's) 1972.
Professor
Telephone: (902) 494-1006
E-mail: faye.woodman@dal.ca
Biography: Professor Woodman has taught a wide range of upper-law courses, with primary emphasis on tax courses and the law of trusts. As a consequence, Professor Women only began teaching first year students several years ago. Recently, Professor Woodman has also developed an interest in the new area of Elder Law. She combines her expertise in the more traditional aspects of elder law practice-wills, trusts and alternative decision marking mechanisms-with her knowledge of taxation, and social welfare programmes.
Professor Faye Woodman is a graduate of University of King’s College (Dalhousie) and Queen’s University Law School. She arrived at Queen’s after being turned down for a scholarship at Dal Law because no scholarships from Dalhousie, at the time, were available to women (She received one from Queen’s.) She clerked with the Department of Justice in Ottawa before being recruited by her former Queen’s tax prof to work in the Tax Policy Branch of the Department of Finance. During her tenure there, which lasted nearly five years, she specialized in the taxation of trusts and personal income taxation. She was employed in the Department during the exciting investigations into a negative income tax -which was never to be for a number of reasons including the oil crisis and the subsequent “stagflation” of the late nineteen seventies. It was during that period she was deeply impressed through her volunteer work with the aged, by the effect on the elderly, particularly older women, of both inflation and the lack of income security.
During the time she served at Finance, Professor Woodman was invited to lecture on taxation at the common law section of the University of Ottawa. She subsequently spent a year full-time at the law school teaching tax and commercial law, after which she decided to go home to teach at Dalhousie.
Professor Woodman has a written on a wide array of subjects including the impact of the tax system on women. She was cited extensively by the Supreme Court in the seminal case of Symes v The Queen, which was about the ability to deduct certain business (child care) expenses. Her views, which touched on the intersection of class and gender, still elicit controversy today.
Professor Woodman most recent publications include an article on current pension reform in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia in the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, and an essay on unjust enrichment and common law spouses titled “’Steig Larsson) are you listening to me?’” in the Estates, Trusts, and Pensions Quarterly. She is currently working on a project with the working title: “How much Tax should the Elderly Pay in Canada?” Professor Woodman is coeditor and author of the first and second editions of The Law of Trusts: A Contextual Approach.
Professor Woodman is Chair of the Dalhousie Pension Advisory Committee for the Dalhousie Pension Plan.
Teaching subjects:
Taxation, Succession, Property, Trusts, Estate Planning, Tax Policy, Elder Law.
Publications:
Editor and contributor (with Mark Gillen), The Law of Trusts: A Contextual Approach, (Toronto: Edmond Montgomery, 2000). The second edition is forthcoming Spring 2006.
Selected articles:
Research interests:
Tax Policy, Women and the Economy, Elder Law, Social Assistance and Succession Law.
Professor Woodman was a member in 2003 of the Advisory Group to the Law Commission of Nova Scotia on the Reform of the Nova Scotia Wills Act.
Courses: