The law treats our fur family as property – so you cannot leave anything to your pet because according to the state they are themselves personal property.  As a result, in order to make sure someone is legally obligated to take care of your furry family members after you die you need to work with an experienced estate planning attorney to create a pet trust.  This way you can establish a legal guardian and a fund of money with a trustee to make sure that your family pet has everything it needs if something happens to you, and does not end up at an overcrowded shelter or rescue agency. So without further ado, let’s talk about how to set up a pet trust and how to take care of our furry family members after you are gone.

The Story of My Dog, Princess Charlotte!

Here is my little furry friend – Princess Charlotte.  I adopted her in 2019, after she was found wandering alone in the woods in the fall of 2018 after the fires in Northern California.  She managed on her own for at least a month or maybe more before she was found and picked up and fostered by Forever Home Dog Rescue.  I always say she had a “Call of the Wild” moment as she managed to survive, completely alone, for at least a month alone in the wilderness.  It was likely because of her cuteness, or her ability to eat anything she finds in a trash can very quickly – that allowed her to survive. Either way she is a tough little cookie.

I found her picture online on a list of dogs waiting to be adopted, and I couldn’t get her face out of my mind.  Even though the picture they had of her on the adoption website was awful. Her eyes were bulging and her tongue was sticking out. But I knew she was the little puppy for me, especially because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.  The name the rescue agency gave her was Charlotte, but when I took her home I added Princess because she thinks she rules the roost – and she couldn’t be Queen as someone has to be Alpha over the chihuahua.  And despite the garbage eating habit, she is pretty royal in her demeanor.

I have so much gratitude for her little furry presence in my life, and despite the occasional outburst at a stranger human or dogs on TV she is really quiet and calm. She loves road trips, and flies really well in her space backpack on airplanes. I can take her anywhere I go.

 

From Rescue Chihuahua to Trust Fund Puppy

As I don’t have children, Princess Charlotte is my only heir, but because she is a dog and dogs are considered a chattel “tangible personal property” under the law she can’t inherit from me if I die. In fact, if I died without an estate plan in place naming a guardian for her, she could end up back at a shelter in need of a second rescue.  This is because under legal inheritance rules property cannot inherit property.  (This used to be the case for women too, we could not own real estate because we were considered property of our husbands or fathers. Luckily, the law has changed, and women can apply for mortgages and own their own property since 1974 across the nation.)  So even though I treat her as a child, she is not a child under the law – she is property. Despite all the news stories you may have read about some eccentric person leaving everything to their pet and disinheriting their family – in all of those cases, the pet in that story ended up getting nothing and may have even been destroyed. 

This is a very sad and preventable outcome that if the individual had just consulted an estate planning attorney, could have been stopped.  They could have still disinherited their family (if that’s really what they wanted to do) and made sure their pet got everything they needed to be taken care of right if they had just created a Trust.

In order to make sure that my little fur baby is taken care of if something happens to me I had to create what is called a Pet Trust inside my own Living Revocable Trust.

The Pet Trust does two things legally – first it creates a fiduciary duty i.e. “a legal responsibility” for someone to take care of your furry family after you are gone.  Second – it creates a container so that you can leave money for your family pet to have all of their food, medical and other needs & expenses met for the rest of their life. Upon their death whatever is left over can go to their guardian or back into your trust to be distributed the same way as the other things that were there to your human family.

 

Pet Trusts Can Be Established for Any Kind of Pet

Pet Trusts can be established for any kind of pet – dogs and cats are very common ones that I create, but I just wrote a trust for a set of three ferrets, and you should MOST CERTAINLY have a pet trust if you have a turtle or tropical birds because they have such a long life they often out live their owners and end up in need of rescue.  But what is most important is that by working with an estate planning attorney to create a Pet Trust you make sure that there is a legal responsibility and money for someone to take care of your pet when you are gone.  Pets have no legal rights without you advocating for them. So it is our responsibility to make sure that they have someone to watch over them when we are gone.  A Pet Trust is the only legal guarantee that will ensure that this is going to happen.

 

Pet Trusts Ensure that Your Furry Family is Taken Care of After You are Gone

The beautiful thing about a pet trust is that not only do you now have someone who is legally responsible for your pet (with that fancy fiduciary duty I described above), but the pet trust can also state HOW you want your pet taken care of after you are gone.

Maybe you have a very special kind of dog who needs a certain type of food or exercise regime.  That can be stated in the pet trust!  Maybe you have a parrot, and some parrots live to be 150 years old, so you can state not only who is going to care for the parrot after you, but you can have instructions on how the parrot will be taken care of just in case they out live the person you designate to be their trustee and guardian, and because its a Trust it outlives any person you designate. Furthermore, the language of the trust makes sure that the guardian has instructions on how to care for your furry or winged family member in a humane and thoughtful manner.  Every pet trust I write includes language that limits the ability to use euthanasia except in the case of significant illness.  So no one’s family pet can be destroyed because of household changes or other human inconvenience.

 

Pet Trusts are Limited Only by Your Own Creativity

As an example of the length a Pet Trust can go to I share the story of The Gunthor Trust.  There was once a Netflix documentary series about this trust and the extent to which the dog (actually a line of dogs all named Gunthor) was to be taken care of.  The trust went so far as to designate the dog’s requirements for homes and entertainment, and because it was funded by a Countess who had millions of dollars the Gunthor Trust actually bought Madonna’s Miami mansion, technically, for the dog.  Some argue that the trust is a hoax and a tax avoidance strategy – and it may be, I don’t judge, I just know that they set up a really great Pet Trust that is doing its job of making sure the line of dogs known as Gunthor are always living their best life.  And this is why it is essential to work with an experienced estate planning attorney when setting up your pet trust, because you want to make sure your pet is taken care of when you are gone to the same standards it is taken care of while you are alive.  And an experienced estate planning attorney can make sure the right language is in your pet trust to make that so.

I appreciate the story of The Gunthor Trust, not because I think the average person wants or needs to leave millions of dollars to their dog, but because it shows that these type of trusts, set up correctly, are only limited by your own creativity, and anyone can make sure that their fur family is taken care of after they are dead.  The sad thing is that because 70% of families have pets but less than 25% of families have an estate plan – I know that most of our furry family members are left at the mercy of random people’s charity if something happens to their owner.  This means that instead of being a Trust Fund Puppy like my Princess Charlotte, most well loved fur babies may turn out to be in need of rescue or worse.  Not every state has no kill shelter rules, and even in Washington and Seattle the shelters are overcrowded because people are just not adopting at the rate they once were.

 

It is Essential to Have an Estate Plan to Make Sure Your Pet is Taken Care of if You Die

Speaking to everyone, young or old, if you have a pet, you have a dependent and you need to create an estate plan to make sure that your dependent is taken care of and does not end up in a shelter or worse.  I know there are a lot of people reading this and saying, Angel, I don’t have anything to put in the Trust for myself.  I’m young, I rent in Seattle, I ride a bike to work, it’s just me and the dog–why should I create an estate plan?

For exactly that.  It is just you and the dog! And who is going to take care of your puppy or your kitten if you are in an accident bike commuting? Your fur family should be your motivator in this case because they depend on you to take care of them, and if you do not come home they cannot make a phone call to have someone pick them up.  An estate plan will not only make sure that your pet is taken care of in case of emergency but it will make sure that you have a plan in place in case of emergency. As every adult over 18 needs to have an estate plan, and especially if you own a pet.

The good news is that you can easily set up an estate plan with a pet trust and designated pet guardian just in case something happens to you.  All you have to do is call an estate planning attorney who will lead you through the process and make it as simple as possible for you.  And as I have a Trust Fund puppy of my own, I will help you out just like I helped my own furry family.  So don’t delay, click the link below to book with my office today so we can make sure your pet family members are taken care of, no matter what.