Loretta Rogers attends the announcement of a Rogers family donation to establish the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research in Toronto, in November, 2014.Chris Young/The Globe and Mail
All four of Loretta Rogers’s children have challenged the $11-million in compensation being claimed by the trustees of her $250-million estate, legal documents show, adding to the dispute over the administration of the telecom matriarch’s assets.
While two of Loretta’s children, Edward and Lisa Rogers, have both filed their objections in court, two others, Melinda and Martha Rogers, have served their challenges to the trustees, but not yet filed in court, according to an endorsement by Ontario Superior Court Justice Bernadette Dietrich.
The endorsement, which provides written instruction to legal counsel about the proceedings of a case, followed a conference in Toronto Wednesday morning with lawyers for the trustees and the four siblings.
Lisa Rogers’s objection was not available through court records as of Thursday morning.
The challenges follow the objection formally lodged by Edward Rogers in March, in which he argued that the trustee’s claimed compensation was “neither fair nor reasonable.”
The children and the trustees have attempted to resolve the issues through mediation, but have not yet been able to do so. They agreed to try to find another mediator by the end of May, or return to court for further guidance, with a further mediation deadline of Sept. 18.
According to the judge’s endorsement, the trustees – Lawrence Tanenbaum, Mary Filippelli and Jim Reid – have argued that Melinda and Martha should be required to file their objections in court. Melinda and Martha had cited “reasons related to privacy” for not doing so, according to the document.
Ms. Rogers was the longest-serving director of the Toronto-based telecom and media conglomerate that she co-founded alongside her husband, Ted, who died in 2008.
Last October, Ms. Rogers’s three trustees filed a detailed account of their yet-unfinished administration of Ms. Rogers’s sprawling estate between her death in 2022 and the end of 2024. The report outlined their calculations of compensation they were owed.
Ms. Rogers’s will authorized her trustees to take anticipated compensation at “reasonable” intervals, allowed them to charge professional fees and an hourly rate for services rendered, and protected them from any legal fees should they be sued in executing the estate, including by any member of the Rogers family.
While the $11-million in claimed compensation falls below the standard guideline of a 5-per-cent fee on managed assets, Mr. Rogers argued the total compensation was “neither fair nor reasonable,” saying the typical rates charged by trustees were too high in this case given the size of the estate. He noted the compensation being sought represented a rate of nearly $4,000 an hour.
Mr. Rogers also lodged a number of other objections, including allegations of missing documentation, and claimed the trustees were wrong to use the fund’s assets to purchase executors’ insurance, despite Ms. Rogers’s will authorizing them to do so.
None of the allegations have been tested in court, and the trustees have yet to file a defence. Lawyers for the three trustees declined to comment, while representatives for each of Ms. Rogers’s four children did not respond to a request for comment.
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In his filing, Mr. Rogers specifically objected to any payment to one trustee, Mr. Tanenbaum, saying it appeared he had “delegated” his duties to his co-trustees. The filings show Mr. Tanenbaum contributed about 5 per cent of the total hours spent administrating the estate by the three trustees.
Mr. Tanenbaum’s company, Kilmer Sports Inc., owns a 25-per-cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T has the right to acquire in July, a move that would give it full ownership of the sports company. Kilmer Sports previously declined to comment on the case.
The other two trustees are Ms. Filippelli, who spent two decades as partner at KPMG LLP and later served as a partner at Deloitte LLP, according to LinkedIn, and Mr. Reid, the former chief human resources officer for Rogers Communications.
As of the end of 2024, the estate was worth about $140-million.
The three sisters are to receive, in equal shares, the proceeds from her registered plans, while the residue of the primary estate – the remaining portion after all expenses and bequests – and personal property is to be divided between the four siblings, according to Ms. Rogers’s will.
Separately, she named beneficiaries in trust should any of her four children be deceased, and more than a dozen individuals to whom she bequeathed legacy payments.