We had our club meeting last night, and had as a guest speaker an attorney who specializes in trusts, and animals. Very interesting, and something we should all think about.
State laws vary, of course, and it is important that you find out your own situation. For example, in NV, only in trusts can provisions be made for animals. Yet, as with so many other things, there are good attorneys and bad ones. Both our president and secretary were shocked, as they both had wills that had a generic wording about the animals to go to someone specific. The speaker explained that was not proper and could be overlooked and challenged.
She also had a funny story to tell. Someone had left a home and large amount of funds for an individual to live in her home to care for her chocolate lab. When the woman died, the dog was 10 years old. With a trust, it is the law firm that is the trustee...so over the years, different attorney's come and go and would be assigned that trust. Part of the law is that once yearly they were to inspect everything. Well, for 30 years, that person continued living in that house, drawing on the funds, and had a chocolate lab!! Of course, he must have gone thru many chocolate labs over the years. The point she was making on that was to insure the animals were identified by micro-chip or something.
