The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Manatt's Veronica Cerruti, a partner in the firm's Family Wealth Transfer Planning & Trust and Estate Administration practice, for an article on the increasing number of pet owners in California who have been putting provisions for their animals into their wills and estate plans. In 2008, California passed a law making it easier to create legally enforceable pet trusts, which lets people leave assets and instructions for the care of their animals should the owners die or become unable to care for them.
As for the amount of money people put into pet trusts, "I have seen them for $20,000 and for hundreds of thousands of dollars," although the larger amounts are typically for horses or long-lived animals such as parrots, Cerruti said.
Read the article here.