Pet Trusts in New York: How to Legally Protect Your Furry Friends

There once was a Maltese dog named Trouble. He belonged to a wealthy heiress. When she died, she left behind a trust with millions of dollars for Trouble’s care. This sparked a major legal dispute. The problem was not that the testator had established a trust for Trouble’s care; you can set up a trust for almost any purpose. It can financially support people you love, regardless of their age and state of health. It can even exist purely to make charitable donations or fund scholarships for students pursuing a field of study that you care about. The testator did not even make the mistake of wording the trust instrument so that Trouble was the beneficiary; she was wise enough to consider that a dog cannot legally be the beneficiary of a trust. The trust instrument even indicated that Trouble was to continue living in her house for the rest of his natural life, so the trust money would pay the utilities in the house and salaries for the dog’s caretakers. This was not a clickbait story about a wealthy, eccentric lady who ordered the trustee of her trust to buy millions of dollars of Kibbles and Bits. It was that she overestimated the dog’s lifespan; the amount of money she set aside for the trust was too much for one Maltese dog to live out its days in a mansion. For help establishing a trust for the care of your pets, contact a Bronx estate planning lawyer.

Calculating Your Pet’s Lifetime Expenses

If you establish a trust for the care of your pets, you are being considerate not only of your furry friends but also of the humans who will handle your financial affairs when you are gone. To determine how much money you will need to place in the trust, consider the life expectancy for the kind of domestic animal for which you are setting up a trust. The oldest housecats live about 20 years, and the life expectancy for domestic dogs varies from ten to 20 years. Consider the cost of the animals’ food and vet expenses, plus compensation for the animals’ caregivers, if you can afford it. The trust will need more money if the pet is a parrot, since they can live more than half a century. It is better to fund the trust with too much money instead of too little. You should include a provision in the trust instrument that, when the last of your pets dies, the trust should dissolve and the trustee should pay a lump sum to the animal rescue shelter or animal-related charity of your choice.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney

An estate planning lawyer can help you establish a pet trust in a way that will provide handsomely for your four-legged friends without causing unnecessary stress for the humans who will be cleaning the litter box or holding the leash.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

businessinsider.com/trouble-leona-helmsley-dog-died-2011-6