Are Pet Trusts Necessary?

Your estate plan shows how much you care, even if you do not have a lot of property to leave to the beneficiaries of your estate. Simply by writing a medical advance directive indicating your wishes about medical treatment during your final illness, you are saving your family untold amounts of stress. If you know that there is a strong possibility that you will eventually enter a nursing home as a Medicaid recipient, then simply drafting a will that assumes that your estate will need to sell your house and pay most of the proceeds to Medicaid will make life easier for the personal representative. In your estate plan, you can be as detailed as you want when it comes to providing for the people and things you love. You can indicate which of your nieces will inherit which of your quilts, describing each quilt in detail and attaching pictures of them to your will. Likewise, it is legal to provide for the care of your pets in your estate plan, even though domestic animals cannot be beneficiaries of your will. For help providing for your pets in your estate plan, with or without establishing a pet trust, contact a Washington, D.C. estate planning lawyer.

How Do Pet Trusts Work?

You can establish a trust for almost any purpose. Usually, the beneficiaries of a trust are your family members, whether adults or minors, but it is also possible to establish a trust where the trust instrument instructs the trustee to pay the expenses associated with your pet’s care. It makes sense to do this if you expect your pets to survive you, or even if you expect to live a long time but want to cover all your bases, and you want your pets to continue living in your house after you die. These are the expenses you should account for:

• The utilities in the house
• Vet bills
• Pet food
• A salary for the person who takes care of the animals

When deciding how much money the trust needs, multiply these expenses by the length of time that animals like your pets typically live. For example, a German shepherd has a considerably shorter lifespan than a domestic parrot. The controversy over the pet trust that Leona Helmsley left for her Maltese dog was because the amount of money with which she funded the trust was enough to last for decades, well beyond the dog’s life expectancy.

Can You Provide for Your Pet in Your Estate Plan Without Establishing a Trust?

It only makes sense to establish a pet trust if you want your pets to continue living in your house after you die. If you are fine with your pets moving in with a family member or friend of yours, simply indicate in your will that this person should inherit your pets. If you can afford it, also bequeath the person some money to help care for the pets.

Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino About Keeping Your Probate Case Simple

A Washington, D.C. estate planning attorney can help you include provisions about pet care in your estate plan.  Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C in Washington, D.C. or call 202-362-5900.

Source:

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