Gunther’s Millions – How You Can Leave Your Estate To Your Pet Instead Of Your Children

You may have seen the recent Netflix docuseries involving a German Shepherd named Gunther who inherited millions to fund his extravagant lifestyle after his owner’s death.

It may have persuaded you to leave your estate to your pet so they to can have an extravagant life on your death, potentially at the expense of your family. It is not uncommon for testators not to want to leave their estate to their family, which can be for several reasons, and testators regularly opt to leave their estate to charities instead. But many people after watching Gunther’s Millions may be wondering whether they can instead leave their estate to their dog or cat.

How do you leave your estate to your pet?

The starting point is that animals are to be treated as any other tangible object. There are no special rights and an animal shall pass through the estate as any other chattel, such as an item of jewellery. This also means an animal cannot own anything themselves which would prevent a testator from being able to leave anything to their pet outright. On reflection, this would appear logical as a pet left a cash sum would be unable to use or access the sums. As with Gunther’s Millions, however, this is possible through the use of a Trust.

A Testator could however leave money to their pet via a trust. Legally, this would be on the basis a testator provides a sum of money to be managed by a Trustee(s), strictly according to the purpose(s) of the Trust. That purpose would be to benefit their pet and the trust monies must be applied in that way. This would of course require the chosen Trustee to be willing to take on that responsibility and would often be the person(s) agreeing to take on the animal on their testator’s death. Such arrangements do come with various health warnings, being that the Trustee may abuse the fund as it is difficult to legally bind a Trustee as to what would be in their pet’s benefit and a pet is unable to challenge this.

The other caveat is that if such an arrangement was put in place in order to prevent a testator’s children from inheriting, a claim against the estate could still be made by them in accordance with the Inheritance (Provisions for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 “the Act”. The Act allows a certain class of people to bring a claim against a deceased’s estate for a financial provision, one of those being an adult child. More details on those claims can be found here.

On considering claims brought pursuant to the Act the Court will consider a number of factors, including the financial position(s) of the Claimant(s), the effect that provision from the estate may have on other beneficiaries, any obligations the deceased might have had to maintain their children, or anybody else, and of course wider factors including the reasons why the children were not provided for in the Will.

It would therefore be expected that there would be poor prospects of mounting a strong defence to an Inheritance Act claim on behalf of a pet, because – as insensitive as this may sound – pets are not regarded as legal persons. Consequently, the Court is unable to properly place any obligation on, or favour the pet which too is treated as a chattel, in place of a beneficiary.