Money, Pets, Trusts and Estates

Dog Caught In $100K Inheritance Fight Because America Is Ridiculous And Can't Have Nice Things

People make things way too complicated.

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Funny dachshund dog listening to music.Remember when Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her damn dog? Now, certainly responsible pet owners should make provisions for their animals in the event of death, but turning a canine into one of the 1 percent is not so much stupid as openly contemptuous of human suffering — which is what Leona Helmsley was famous for, so ultimately we couldn’t really act surprised.

Now a still crazy but at least much more reasonable dog inheritance is headed for a legal showdown. “Winnie the Pooh,” a dachshund who once lived with the late Patricia Bowers, received a $100K inheritance to pay for his continued upkeep, with the remainder going to animal-related charity.

Now this son of a bitch demands his inheritance.

[I]n papers filed this week in Manhattan Surrogate Court, [Winnie’s caretaker Virginia] Hanlon says she has received hardly any money for Winnie in the last six years from the estate’s executor, attorney Harriet Harkavy.

Hanlon is asking the court to order Harkavy to produce an accounting and to pay Hanlon what Winnie is owed.

Hanlon pegs that at roughly $6000 a year, using guidelines provided by the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals about how much a dachsund needs in food and care.

Obviously $100K sounds like a stupidly large amount, but with the rest of the money going to charity, there’s no reason to fault Bowers for managing her estate with an abundance of caution. What is stupid is the fact that we’re even having this conflict.

How hard is it to hand over money? Having never pampered a financially independent pup before, I may be missing something, but it seems to me that Hanlon collects receipts for dog food and whatever other odds and ends people give their mongrels and then the estate pays her. That’s just not that hard, is it?

And yet, apparently, it’s a whole frigging rigmarole for these people.

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Harkavy proposed to resolve the controversy by cashing out the trust now, sending Hanlon $30,000 and the remaining $70,000 to the Animal Medical Center.

NO. Just give her the money for her expenses as she incurs them. This is an astoundingly easy problem to fix.

Harkavy in court documents says she has paid Hanlon for $5,775 to cover the cost of emergency surgery required by Winnie and produced an October 2015 bank statement showing that Winnie’s fund still had $94,308.78. She insists that checks she has sent Hanlon over the years were never cashed.

Then cancel those checks and write new ones. I’m not saying that Harkavy’s ideas may not be perfectly workable. Indeed, Harkavy’s proposals might well save the estate money; if resolving Winnie’s funds ends Harkavy’s obligations, that might put an end to her drawing fees from the estate. And yet, the will seems to have wanted everyone to go forward with this arrangement, so here we are.

The real tragedy of this is that some poor judge is going to have to wade into these filings and render a decision that we, the taxpayers of New York, will have to pay for, all so some old woman could give her dog about double the city’s median household income.

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This is why we need Donald Trump. We have to blow this all up in a cleansing fire.

And why name a dog after a bear? I need to lie down now.

Trust-fund dog named ‘Winnie the Pooh’ at center of ruff Manhattan inheritance battle [New York Daily News]

Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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