The pet-trust gap is a doorway back into estate plans

Among the 73% of American adults with an estate plan, AICPA figures cited by Financial Planning show, only 40% have included a pet in it. Attachment is not the issue: 95% of pet owners call the animal family, 62% budgeted between $1,390 and $5,295 for their animal's care in 2025, according to Rover data, and dogs or cats live in 57% and 40% of American homes.

The omission is rarely deliberate: AICPA found 40% of respondents never considered raising the pet during estate planning, and 38% assumed relatives would sort it out. Sorting rarely works. Cary Sinnett, AICPA's director of financial planning and a former advisor, recalls the clients whose mother died leaving a dog and four siblings; with nothing written down, the siblings arranged a rotating visitation calendar for the dog, an image worth holding the next time an estate review skips the pet question.

The fix is a pet trust, not a beneficiary line, since states treat animals as property and a pet cannot inherit. The vehicle is funded with money, run by a human trustee, and carries a named caretaker and written instructions; Achim von Bodman, a CPA at Secaucus, New Jersey-based Watter CPA, says the details start with the animal's expected lifespan, which sets how long the trust must last and how much money needs to go into it.

For the advisor, the pet question is a rare thing: a low-stakes question that opens a high-stakes conversation. Asking “Where does Fluffy live if something happens to you?” does more than add a pet rider; it forces the client to name a trustee, a caretaker, and a backup, and to confront gaps they have papered over elsewhere. As this publication has argued, the last mile of retirement is won in the calm years, and the pet question is a calm-year question that exposes whether the client has actually chosen the people who will execute their wishes.

Clients who need a pet trust need trust documents, funding, and a trustee relationship, three items that often sit outside the advisor's default forms. Advisors who raise Fido first are not just closing an oversight; they are repositioning the estate plan as a living document that covers the whole household. If a client assumes the family will sort it out, the advisor who asked knows exactly how that sorting goes.