Living Trusts for Birds (when you are gone)

[Tiki]

On another post, Yehudasf mentioned that he has a living trust to look after his birds when he is gone. I would like to know more about this. I often worry what would happen to my birds if both my husband and myself went unexpectedly before our time. We do not have human children or any other obvious heirs, I just want to be sure the birds will be OK and humans can't steal their money. How do you guarantee this? I mean prevent the human caretakers from fudging the books and stealing their money? How do you find people who will really love the birds as you do? And make sure they know what they are doing and will take the birds to the vet when they need it? We are not rich, just working class types but we do own our own home.

Is it legally binding? Is there any way cousins can crawl out of the closet and break the trust?

Can animals inherit in America? They can't in Australia, they are considered "chattel".

[Tiki]

My husband loves the birds so he would take good care of them, I have no one else then who could claim. But in Australia, the state can take over a person't estate if they have no surving heirs. That group that you are talking about-do they have a branch in Australia? We are not allowed to export birds so I can't send them to America in this case. We probably have a PCW branch around here. My birds are not breeders, last year I had all of them together thinking if they didn't have a nest box they wouldn't breed. Little buggers fooled me! They laid eggs on the floor, I couldn't bring myself to toss them out so I gave in and bought a nest box. Now the boys and girls are separate. So their won't be any more babies, I just want these 10 cockatiels to be well looked after for the rest of their lives. When they pass on, probably I would want the balance to go to one or more worthy bird rescues.

[Tiki]

I'll have to look into that. We have what is called the Public Trustee-people can use them to be the executors of their wills but I don't know if they deal with living trusts. Work has been so crazy I have no time to make calls during business hours in a place where I can't be over heard by coworkers. Hopefully next week things will quiet down.