Post #3876591

I should probably be grateful that this sent me down the road of learning about pet trusts, the actual legal vehicle for leaving large sums of money to an animal. But that’s less because it’s relevant to the point here and more because I’m a fucking nerd. Notably the money is controlled by a trustee who is empowered to pay for the animal’s food, healthcare, etc. I imagine that an enterprising trustee in the most famous cases could make some very compelling arguments about the necessity of maintaining, say, a big house for the cat to roam around in that they and their family would coincidentally live in as well, but I don’t care enough to look into it in-depth. If the animal dies before the trust runs out of money, then the remainder is distributed according to either the trust instructions or applicable state laws (in the US, at least). Of course the cases of people putting millions into pet trusts are usually less about the pet trust and more about spiting the other presumptive heirs, a sort of disinterestance with a more spiteful edge. To the actual argument here, however, all I can say is that nobody without a large estate has ever made the allegedly absurd decision to dedicate their estate to the care and keeping of their pets. Every single case where that has happened has been because of a member of the supposedly-enlightened moneyed classes being fucking weird and having too much money.