Hello All,
My questions is spurred by this article Woman Leaves $13M Fortune to Pet Cat where a woman leaves a cat $13 Million Dollars. I know that this isn’t rare and has happened before, but I fail to understand how this is legal. The cat isn’t capable of holding wealth. Who administers the money, what happens when the cat dies? Something tells me the lawyers end up with the money.
So, is this legal, why with all the needy in the world some bat shiat crazy woman leave her millions to a cat? (BTW, her money she can do what she wants with it, just doesn’t make sense). MEOW.
I do not know of any country that permits an animal to possess property of any sort. If you want to leave money to an animal, you have to leave it with an organization or a person. (In this case, clearly, it was to a person.) Sometimes, people create a trust for this purpose, with one or more people appointed to manage the trust for the animal’s benefit.
Because I am not sure if “assets” of any type can be assigned to a non-human. And I do realize that the nurse is the “executor” for the cat, but the funds are still in the “cat’s name”. Seems rather stupid and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Buttons chokes on some tuna or is squished under a car tire in the near future. What happens when Buttons checks out?
I think you’re reading into the blog story in a way that makes it as unbelievable as possible. Frankly, the story is written in such a way as to make it as fantastical as possible that that’s understandable.
The bottom line is that cats can’t own property anywhere in the world. So the money was not left to a cat. From the story, it appears that the property was left to the nurse.
If the article was written “Nurse inherits $13 million!” my first thought would be elder abuse - there are plenty of caregivers who take advantage of elderly patients (especially if senility and dementia are an issue) and convince them to will over assets.
Given that lawyers are involved, it seems much more likely to me that the money was in fact given into a trust. If so, the trust will determine how the money can be used and where it will go afterward.
But… if the story read “Elderly woman leaves $13 million in trust to the Save the World Society. The funds will remain in trust, with proceeds to be used to care for the woman’s cat until it passes away. The trust will be managed by the woman’s lawyers and care for the cat will be provided by the woman’s faithful nurse.”
Boring! No story there… in the world of blogging, you’re just not going to cut it if you find out all of the facts and present them reasonably.
(Admittedly, I don’t know that these are the facts. I just know that the story is phrased in a provocative way.)
I do tend to picture this sort of situation devolving into a battle, with the secondary heirs trying by increasingly elaborate methods to kill the cat, and the cat comically outwitting them every time.
As has already been well-answered, trusts are nothing fancy and are often used by wealthy* individuals to protect and to arrange for an orderly distribution of assets after death. We are right now setting up a trust with a corporate trustee which will take care of our pets should we both die, and the trust does not dissolve until after the death of the last pet. This doesn’t mean we have “willed” a huge amount to the pet, but just more than enough to ensure great health care and general care during its life (we will also give a large fee to the new owner for each animal for the time and trouble of caring for it).
(There’s absolutely no requirement that you be wealthy, or even middle-class, it’s just that it costs a lot more to set up a trust, so typically only someone with significant post-mortem assets goes through the trouble.)
Since wills and trusts are legally enforceable and survive the death of the person(s) making them (provided all the trustees don’t die, and it’s difficult for a corporate trustee such as a bank to “die”), the distinction is almost meaningless. If our trust says each cat has $50,000 to care for it through its life, and the surviving corporate trustee decides “fuck that, we’re keeping the cash”, they have breached the trust and can be sued.
Yes, but that’s because you live in a society which has decided that (within limits) the wishes of the deceased, if formally expressed in this way, should be respected even after their deaths.
The money you leave doesn’t belong to you after your death; it belongs to the trustee. He’s not free to deal with it as he wishes; assuming your trust is legal and enforceable, a court will require him to deal with it in accordance with the terms of the trust - assuming, of course, that some living person sues to enforce the terms of the trust.
In other words, its because, and only because, living people care about your wishes being respected, and because a community of living people is willing to enforce your wishes, that your wishes will be respected. It is their views, not yours, which ultimately determine how the money must be used.
And this is highlighted by the fact that, to be enforceable, a trust must normally be either (a) for the benefit of identifiable living persons, or (b) for a public charitable purpose. Keeping Tiddles in cat litter and fresh fish is neither of these things, and a trust to do this is valid (in some but not all jurisdictions) only by way of special exemption from the usual rules. If you lived in another jurisdiction you couldn’t do this. Or if you tried to establish a trust which would care after your death for, say, a particular fruit tree to which you felt a sentimental attachment, the trust would be unenforceable.
In short, you can’t decide what to do with the money that used to be yours after your death, when it will no longer be yours. Other, still living, people decide what will happen to that money. They may, or they may not, decide to use the money in accordance with what you hoped, when you were alive. But it will be their decision, not yours, which ultimately controls the matter.
What UDS says is generally true for most non-profits. It often happens that someone leaves money to an institution for a specific purpose which ceases to exist after that person’s death, and in that case the living must step in.
For example, one educational institution had a number of scholarships set up by living will or bequest which were designated for a specific department. When that department was closed for financial reasons, the institution had to go back to the next of kin where possible and get their instructions on what to do with the remainder of the scholarship funds. In at least one case, there was no living next of kin, and the university reverted that person’s money to a general scholarship fund. But in the other cases, it was the living, not the deceased, who made the decision on what would happen to the money. The institution had no real way of knowing whether the next of kin was acting with the deceased’s intention in mind; both from a legal and practical standpoint, there wasn’t a lot they could do to ensure that.
Having said that, I don’t think the statement that “you can’t decide what to do with the money that used to be yours after your death” is any less true with providing pet care than it is with any other trust. So long as a pet care trust is enforceable in your jurisdiction, it’s just as enforceable for pet care as it is for educational or welfare trusts. As a fundraiser I would hazard a guess that the possibility of fraud might be higher in a postmortem pet care trust, if only because there might be less scrutiny ("$3,000 on pet food…well, you said it was that organic fish from Whole Foods…") and because there simply aren’t as many people personally involved. In the scholarship example above, if money had gone missing several people would have known about it, not least the school’s financial officer, the scholarship officers, the financial aid department, and the students actually receiving the scholarships.