Attention All Estates and Trusts Professors (And Pet Lovers)
posted by Sarah Waldeck
Jeffrey Toobin has written a must-read article about a $12 million trust that Leona Helmsley established for the benefit of her dog, Trouble. I usually cover the topic of honorary trusts quite quickly, but this semester I’m going to slow down a bit. If nothing else, Trouble’s trust should force students to contemplate the extent to which they are committed to dead-hand control. Beyond the obvious concerns about spending millions on a single dog, as Toobin points out, Trouble herself probably would have been happiest if she had simply been adopted by a dog-loving family.
As an aside, we all know how prickly adult children can get when a step-parent receives the bulk of the decedent’s property. But imagine if the children are disinherited because of a dog . . . .
October 1, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Posted in: Wills, Trusts, and Estates
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