05/07/2018

Is your family lucky enough to have a furry, feathered or scaled friend? The research on the health benefits for us in having a pet is very strong and many people do. So why shouldn’t our pets be recognised in our Will?

The RSPCA says that in Australia there are 4.8 million pet dogs, 3.9 million pet cats, 4.2 million pet birds and 2.5 million other pets like horses, rabbits, reptiles (yuk), guinea pigs and a particularly fetching tarantula named Cedric.

Even though most pets ‘rule the roost’ at home (pun intended), animals are actually classed as property, so you will need to deal with them in your Will if you want to decide who they end up with. We had a client whose Will requested that their dog be “put to sleep” after their death but luckily the Executor found a willing new carer for the pooch instead. Indeed such a direction may be unenforceable as a breach of the ‘cruelty to animals’ legislation.

It’s not possible to leave a bequest to a pet. You can’t simply say “I give $10,000 to my loyal goldfish, Nemo”.  The money must be left to whoever is looking after Nemo to cover Nemo’s expenses.

There are a number of ways you might do this.

1.    You could give the money directly to Nemo’s carer and hope they don’t decide to use it for themselves and arrange for Nemo to be an integral part of Friday night’s fish & chips.

2.    You could give the money to a charity in exchange for them looking after Nemo, and hope that the fish tank doesn’t go dry while the charity spends hundreds of hours in committee trying to work out what to do with the money and how to deal with an ever-skinnier Nemo.

3.    You could set up a trust fund and require your Executors to look after the money and regularly pay Nemo’s carers to reimburse them the cost of looking after Nemo.

The issue with that last alternative is setting aside enough money to outlast Nemo.  Hopefully the pet is not a long-lived animal like cockatoos (who occasionally live to be 120) or tortoises (many of whom remember the last Ice Age).

If you have a pet think about them when you’re preparing your Will in the hope of finding the right person to look after them.  If that person is the ‘right person’ they probably don’t even want to be paid to do so.

For further information, please contact Townsends Business & Corporate Lawyers on (02) 8296 6222 or info@townsendslaw.com.au to see how we can assist.