The law does allow you, however, to establish a trust to provide for the care of your pets after you die. But you need to address your issues with your children. I recommend counseling.
At
least, that's what my fellow advice columnists recommend when they want to
sound authoritative and don't want readers to suspect they're just winging it.
Speaking
of winging it, you can include birds in your trust for animals, since they are
vertebrates. That is one of the requirements contained in the Washington
probate code (Chapter 11.118, Revised Code of Washington) authorizing trusts
for animals: The beneficiary must be a "non-human animal with a
vertebrae." Sorry, jellyfish owners.
Before
the statute went into effect a few years back, the administrator of your estate
could have found him or herself in a real dogfight, so to speak, trying to
enforce testamentary gifts (those made in a will or trust) to animals, which
have been disfavored in American case law. According to the American Bar
Association Journal,
“The common law courts of England looked favorably on gifts to support specific animals. This approach, however, did not cross the Atlantic. Attempted gifts in favor of specific animals usually failed for a variety of reasons, such as for being in violation of the rule against perpetuities because the measuring life was not human or for being an unenforceable honorary trust because it lacked a human or legal entity as a beneficiary who would have standing to enforce the trust.”
“The common law courts of England looked favorably on gifts to support specific animals. This approach, however, did not cross the Atlantic. Attempted gifts in favor of specific animals usually failed for a variety of reasons, such as for being in violation of the rule against perpetuities because the measuring life was not human or for being an unenforceable honorary trust because it lacked a human or legal entity as a beneficiary who would have standing to enforce the trust.”
Regarding
the “rule against perpetuities” – the bane of law students and bar exam
candidates for generations – the less said, the better. The rule, designed to
prevent “the dead hand” from controlling a family's wealth for generations on
end, is itself essentially dead in Washington. One of its requirements was
using an identifiable human life to determine if a trust was valid. That
requirement is gone. The Washington Trusts for Animals statute specifically
authorizes a trust “for the care of one or more animals” and provides that the
trust will terminate “when no animal that is designated as a beneficiary of the
trust remains living.” As long as Wolfgang and Mitzi are around to annoy each
other and take up space on the couch, the trust will be enforceable.
Moreover,
any person designated to care for the animals, any person having custody of the
animals, or “any person appointed by a court upon application to it by any
person” – opening up the field to just about anyone, has legal standing to
enforce the terms of the trust. Again, Schnauzers are excluded from the list.
The
trust needs to identify what animals it is intended to benefit. I recently drew
up a trust as part of a will that incorporated by reference a separate list of
the animals the client then owned, including breed, description and name, and I
also included a provision that the trust was to benefit "any house-pets or
other animals as defined in RCW 11.118.010 that [the client] may acquire after
the execution of this instrument." But any offspring of those animals born
after the client's death were specifically excluded, providing a disincentive
for any named custodian to begin an aggressive breeding program in order to
keep the trust income flowing.
Speaking
of aggression, I think Mitzi just sunk her claws into Wolfgang. Some kind of
territorial dispute on the couch.
Are
you sure you don't want to trade them for a jellyfish?
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