It’s National Pet Day! Here’s How an Estate Plan Can Provide for Your Pets.
April 11 is National Pet Day. This unofficial holiday reminds us to appreciate the animals in our lives and asks us to consider adopting or otherwise supporting animals in shelters and rescues. On this National Pet Day, I’d like to suggest one more way you might mark the occasion: by including your pet in your estate plan.
There are a number of ways to provide for your animal friend in your estate plan. In this article, I’ll outline three ways (and a bonus fourth way) to make sure your pet’s wellbeing is provided for even if you are not around to care for your pet yourself. If you would like to include any of these strategies in your estate plan, I hope you’ll get in touch to discuss your pets and more over the course of a free estate planning consultation.
1. Give Your Pet to the Caretaker of Your Choice. Your estate plan can designate a specific person to take ownership of your pet in the event your pet outlives you. Taking this opportunity allows you to consider all of the factors and pick the person who you think will give your pet the best care. This person could be a relative, but it could also be a friend who isn’t otherwise a beneficiary of your estate plan. You could also designate a shelter or rescue where you know the pet will be cared for until it finds a new permanent home.
2. Leave Your Pet’s Toys, Medications, and Other Accessories to the Pet’s New Caretaker. Once you’ve chosen the right person to receive your pet, your estate plan can allow that same person to inherit all of your pet’s stuff. Leashes, beds, scratching posts, treats, toys, medications, and pet food all pass as part of your estate upon your death. If your estate plan says where your pet is going after your death, it is probably wise for your estate plan to direct your pet’s things to the same place.
3. Consider Leaving Cash to the Chosen Caretaker to Provide for the Pet’s Future Needs. Pets are expensive. All of the food, medical visits, and other costs can add up quickly. For this reason, you might consider leaving a lump sum of cash to your pet’s new caretaker to help defray some of the costs associated with caring for your animal friend. Keep in mind that this gesture is partly for the new caretaker’s benefit, but it’s also for the benefit of your pet, making it more likely that they will continue to enjoy the quality of life that you have been able to provide.
So, to recap, an estate plan can allow you to give your pet to a person who you hand pick to care for the pet after your death. In addition to giving this person your pet, you can also give that person all of the food and other tangible items used in caring for your pet, as well as some cash to help offset the costs of maintaining your pet for you. For many people, taking some or all of these steps will be enough to ensure that their pets continue to live great lives. But some pet owners may way to go further, which is where this bonus concept comes in.
Bonus: Consider Using a Pet Trust. Believe it or not, the law expressly allows trusts to be created for the benefit of a pet or other domestic animal. As we’ll see, establishing a pet trust is similar to doing all three of the things listed above, but with an added layer of formality and certainty that would otherwise be missing from the plan. Without a pet trust, a person leaves the animal and other property to a caretaker and hopes for the best. However, there’s no mechanism in place to ensure that money left to the caretaker will be spent entirely on the animal. That’s where pet trusts come in. Technically, the pet, all of its accessories, and any money meant to provide for the animal’s needs are all owned by the trust, which is controlled by a trustee. The terms of the trust will designate a caretaker who will be tasked with looking after the pet, but it will be the trustee who is in charge of the money and making sure any distributions of money to the caretaker are actually used for the animal’s benefit. All of this may seem like overkill if your goal is simply to leave a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to someone to help offset the cost of keeping a normal pet. But consider that some people keep exotic or purebred animals as pets, and others keep large animals such as horses which have more costs associated with them than the typical cat or dog. For these people, a pet trust can be a great way to make sure that a valuable animal with expensive needs is adequately cared for even after its original owner is gone.
Pets are often more than just animals – they’re family. That’s why we put so much of our time and money towards giving our pets the best lives possible. Thankfully, estate planning can allow us to continue providing a high standard of living for our pets, even after we have passed on. If you would like to talk about a personalized estate plan that includes provisions for your pet, I hope you’ll get in touch to schedule a free consultation. I’m sure your pets will thank you. Happy National Pet Day!
The information contained in this blog post is intended only as general legal information and should not be construed as formal legal advice on any matter, nor should its presentation be construed as intent on the part of The Law Office of Ryan A. Layton, PLLC to form an attorney-client relationship with any user of this website. For more information, please see this disclaimer.