Bri Conn, CFP®: Welcome to Childfree Life by Design. Today we’re talking about protecting our beloved pets and ensuring their care in an emergency and what it means for people who are building a Childfree life on their own terms. I’m Bri Conn, here with Dr. Jay Zigmont, and in this episode we’re covering identifying a long-term guardian, securing critical medical and feeding information and creating an easily accessible emergency plan.

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen to your animal companions if you were suddenly unable to care for them even temporarily, this conversation will give you the clarity and tools to make intentional decisions that support the life you want.

Intro: From Child-Free Insights, this is Child-Free Life By Design, the go-to resource for building the child-free life you want. Every episode gives you practical guidance, clear direction, and meaningful conversations to help you live intentionally and design a future on your terms. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Alright, Dr. Jay, so in this conversation, we are gonna be talking about pets.

So often we are planning for retirement, travel and homes, but pets are an often overlooked item, assuming that gonna outlive them.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: As much as I would love to outlive my pets, I’m also realistic. Sometimes you don’t get to choose who goes first.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Protection is just as important as something like an advanced directive. ’cause you’re right, we really never know when we might pass or something might happen to us and we can no longer care for them.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, and really, the whole point is you have to have a plan. If you’re just like hoping something happens or takes care of ’em, there’s no guarantee on that. You need to have a plan. It has to be in writing and you have to have people to help you through it to actually get it done. And if you got pets like mine, my dog who has some special needs and special food, he got a whole bunch of things, I have to explain all that so people know what he needs.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Your pet, [00:02:00] he’s a gem of a dog. I just love him so much. But you are right. He’s got some different things going on. Let’s go over some things that people might need to specifically lay out. I.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, so here’s the way I look at it, there’s two periods of time. One is like, Hey, I’m in a car crash, I’m disabled, and the other one is I pass. You gotta think about this in two phases. The one while you’re disabled, that’s where your power of attorneys, other documents come in that say, I want people to do this when I cannot.

So you’re in a car crash, you’re in the hospital for three days, who goes and lets your dog on feed your cat. And part of that is they have to actually know that you have a pet. They have to know who to contact, how to get into your house or your apartment, and how to feed him and what needs to be done and pay the bill.

It’s all of those things that happen when you’re disabled, and let’s be real if you don’t have a pet sitter or somebody that can do that for you, I don’t know how you’re gonna find one in an emergency for three days. I mean, Bri, what’s your plan for [00:03:00] I don’t know, heaven forbid you got a car crash and you’re in the hospital for the next couple days and nobody can take care of your dog.

Bri Conn, CFP®: We have multiple people. We’ve got lined up. She’s got her solid place she goes to all the time, so she knows them and she loves them. They love her. We’ve got other people who know how to get into our house to get it. I have a little doggy resume basically made up for her that has all of her information and the people who would care for her are able to go in and take that information and use it to take care of her.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah. For us, our pet sitter will come take care of him and in a cat in the house if needed. Or, put him in a car and bring him to his camp where he goes and hangs out and he comes with his bucket and his meds and all that other stuff that goes with it. Cat’s gonna be fine for a couple days.

Let’s be real. The dog, not so much.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Yeah, dogs are a little bit more to care for in those cases than the cats where you can just give them some food, make sure their litter box is clean, give ’em some water, and they’re typically okay.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Cat gets mad enough, my wife goes out [00:04:00] for conference or something, he’ll be mad. But he’ll be fine. He’s got a feeder and all of that, he will tell everybody he’s starving, but we know the truth. So that’s what happens when you’re disabled.

The other question then becomes, all right, what happens if you pass? So that’s a different question. So now we’re done talking about we’re gonna go to camp for a little bit, or we’re gonna go to the pet sitter for a little bit. But who’s gonna take on your pets long term? And, yeah, I’ll use my example.

So we have an English Mastiff. He’s 155 pounds. He’s a gorgeous dog. He’s fun. He’s a therapy dog, but he’s big. And then we have a cat who is a jerk. Okay. He just is, that’s just part of his nature. He’s an orange cat, so anyone that knows orange cats knows what I’m talking about.

So when we’re talking about who’s gonna take care of them, when we pass, we have some special requests. We need people that will willing to do that, which is different than saying, Hey, yeah, I need somebody to watch ’em for a week. Or even two weeks. So where have you started with that, Bree?

Bri Conn, CFP®: When [00:05:00] I first set everything up, I just assigned it to somebody and I didn’t ask them whether or not they would want my dog. I just said, Hey, by the way, you are listed to my estate documents as taking our dog, should anything happen to us. And it ended up being fine. They’re like, I would hope so. If I said anything else, I would be upset. So it worked out for that situation. But we do have multiple people wind up and they are aware that if anything happens to us and our dog is still living, then they will be the ones caring for her.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yep. My wife and I, we have our doctors to Childfree Trust®. I’m gonna to kind of walk you through how our are set up and how it works. The first step is a human in our case, and that’d be great if you have a friend, family member, others. The second is some type of backup. Whether it’s a shelter or somebody that specifically does this. For example, one of the ones I love to talk about here in Nashville area, is a senior catio, where the cats own the place and run it. You give ’em a certain amount of money and the cats will own the place for the rest of their life.

If we talk about cats [00:06:00] in particular, getting a home for an elder cat is really hard. It just is. So there’s these programs that will do this, that say, all right, we will take them. And let’s be real, they want some money to do it, but then, either they get adopted out if possible, or they have a home.

And what you do in your documents, you specify both the person, the place, and then you’re specifying how much money they get. Now some technicalities on this. You can in your will say, my dog goes to X. Now, from a legal standpoint, one of the things that was surprising to me is your pet is like giving away your favorite guitar.

Like it’s just property. And I was like, that doesn’t feel right. But legally, their personal property. What do you think of that, Bri?

Bri Conn, CFP®: It makes me so sad to think of our pets just being given away, like they’re not a living, breathing creature.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Well this is the law.

Bri Conn, CFP®: The law can still make me feel sad.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: So the law says, [00:07:00] okay, your pet goes to so and so and it’s no different than grandma’s engagement ring goes to so and so, that’s it. Now, the way it works from the legal standpoint is the person who is getting your pet has a choice. They’re like, yes, I agree, or no, I wanna pass.

It’s just like if you said, Hey, you get grandma’s ring, and they’re like, Nope, I don’t want it. They can pass it off to the next person. So you always wanna have a backup because there’s no guarantee they’re gonna say yes. And you don’t know, do you die after they die? Anytime you’re setting up documents, you need like a primary and a backup and maybe a backup to the backup, depending on how you wanna look at it. I like the last backup for pets being some type of rescue or organization rather than an individual. ’cause I’m hoping they outlive everything else. It’s not perfect, I’m gonna tell you right now, but it’s the best thing you do.

So you give your animal, which legally is property to somebody. You have two options as far as giving them money to provide support. So Bri, in your documents, do you give any money to say, [00:08:00] Hey, take care of my pets?

Bri Conn, CFP®: We do have money set to take care of our little pup.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yep. It’s very common. People ask me numbers. I often see $25,000 to take care of pets unless they have super special needs and they might need a little extra more. You can guess the way, we have ours structured up. And, you set aside the money, but here’s how it works. If you put that in your will and say, Hey Jane gets my dog and gets $25,000 to care for him, Jane is not under any legal requirement to take care of your dog.

And she can take the $25,000 and spend it on whatever she wants, a new vacation. Now I’m hoping the people you pick don’t do that, but, Jane could in theory go, nope, I’m not taking the dog. Yes, I’m taking the money. How does that feel?

Bri Conn, CFP®: That just seems so wrong. If anybody set their pet to me and said, oh, here’s money, I would never go, I don’t want them. [00:09:00] Sorry, I’ll just take the money instead. I don’t know how as a human you could do that. My heart is not in that place.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, but let’s be real on this. When it comes to people dying and the Estates and family and money, weird things happen all the time. I had somebody who literally at his mother’s funeral went to his sister. His mother was buried like, Hey, when do I get my check? And I’m like, you did that at the funeral? And I’m like, oh no. So unfortunately, while I want to rely on people being good and human, I’ve seen way too many of just stupid things. My friends, my family are different. You’re wrong. Money and inheritances makes things happen that just you never had planned for.

Does that make any sense, Bri?

Bri Conn, CFP®: Yeah, I have watched it happen many times.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: You’re like, oh, they mean well, we’ll take care. I’m like, no. So here’s what we’re gonna do is set. We’re gonna set up a document, and this is what my wife and I did. Part of our trust. Now mind you, [00:10:00] a trust people usually hear about is people have millions of dollars and they’re leaving generation of skipping trust and your trust fund baby.

That’s not what I’m talking about right now. Technically, legally it’s the same document, but it’s the purpose is different. So when we talk about a trust in the context of Childfree folks and Childfree Trust®, it has a different purpose. So the vast majority of trust, their purpose is to pass money to next generation for Childfree people, it’s to protect us and the people and things we care about.

So it’s not necessarily about protecting the next generation, and in this case, we’re setting up a pet trust to take care of the pet. So the pet trust is set up and it says, okay, I’m gonna give $25,000 to Jane. It is managed by a professional trustee who then goes and double checks to make sure Jane’s actually taking care of the dog and that the money goes to the dog’s benefit.

So when we set up human trusts, yeah, we’ll set aside things with a hems protection, we can use it for healthcare, housing, basic maintenance, education, food type [00:11:00] stuff. We can do the same type of setup for animals and we say, Hey, this is for their care, their food, their treats, their spa, but it’s not for, you want to go on a cruise. And that’s part of the job of a pet trust and the trustee is to double check and make sure that this is actually being done. And this might sound a little harsh, but it’s a good system. And I’ll give you an analogy, I have worked with parents before. I actually have very few, I have one or two clients that still have kids. And when you have kids, you will give your child to somebody and say, you’re gonna be the guardian.

And what I tend to recommend is then you set somebody else to be in charge of the money for the kid. It’s just a check and balance. And people go, well, if I trust him with my kid, I obviously don’t trust him with the money. I’m like, yeah, but. And that’s what we’re doing with a pet trust. We’re saying, you take care of my dog, but I’m gonna have a professional manage the money.

And you send them receipts. You make sure you check [00:12:00] in with that, you’ll get the money so that we have that check and balance. And if Jane decides, Hey, I can’t take care of the dog and ends up passing it off to the rescue, then the money now shifts to the rescue. That’s part of the structure.

What do you think about that, Bri?

Bri Conn, CFP®: I like the structure because having a check in balance, I do believe is really important, especially when it comes to something as important as your pets. I know a Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and so many of us love our pets dearly and look at them almost as they’re valentine too, a little bit.

And so if you’re going to protect either, for the clients who do have children, their children, or you would want your spouse taken care of, you’d want yourself taken care of, I just wanna want your pet taken care of. And having a check and balance for that is gonna be even better than just saying, Hey, here you go. Here’s some money to take care of ’em, and not outlining any rules.

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Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: to be technical, the way my documents are set up, I’m just using my example. If I pass, my wife gets a dog, it’s not going to Jane automatically. And if she passes, I get them. The cat’s gonna hate me forever. I’m just gonna tell you right now.

Usually it takes about two weeks after my wife being gone, before I even see him. Maybe he’ll warm up to me. You set that up and we’re talking about, Hey, you’re both gone, or you’re single and you’re gone and you set that up and put it into the documents. Now that’s the legal protection.

The next step is like, what are your care documents form. That’s your little doggy bible or cookbook or whatever you wanna [00:14:00] call it. Here are the things that I care about for them, and then how do I make sure both the person taking care for them and the pet trust are ensuring that happens?

So, in the Childfree Trust® system, we have these care documents built in there so that anytime you can change what your dog wants or your cat wants, or I don’t know, I guess we could talk about, your pet fish, your snake, your whatever. I am not a snake fan, but if you are, you go right ahead. And you can specify what do we want and add and subtract at any time.

So, the way my document’s set up, the way we set it up with Childfree Trust®, the trust document says, Hey, I want a pet trust set up. Go see this other document for which pet, who’s it go to, how much money? We do that intentionally because, we got a lot of folks that they might foster an animal for six months and wanna make sure during those six months that pet is protected because things can happen at any time.

You have to be creating these in the living documents. I’ve got a couple of friends, [00:15:00] I’m like, how many pets you got now? Well, it was seven, it’s now eight, now it’s six. And I’m like, I can’t keep track of which one’s which. You need to have a document that goes with that. So that you can make sure at any moment if something happens to you, they’re protected.

This is not one of those things like, oh, once every five or 10 years I update this. If my document was written five years ago, I’d have a different set of pets.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Taking care to continually update it and making sure you’re putting new information in as it becomes available is incredibly important. Whether it’s something changes with you or something changes with your pet. We just moved and so that would be something, Hey, my dog has a new place. She goes to new vet. All of those things would need to be updated. That’s not something you wanna have to redo all of your legal documents for all the time. That’s why those care plans are set up in Childfree Trust® to make it easy for you to do that.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: If you change states, you’ll have to get new signatures. I’m just telling you that’s how it works. But if you’ve moved down the street and you’re like, Hey, I’ve got a new apartment [00:16:00] and a new vet, well, let’s update that because I think what’s happening is we did a study on this and looked at Childfree people and what percentage have a will and we found less than 20%. And the number one reason why people get a will in the United States is for kids. And mind you, the general population, only about 30% have wills, so we’re talking a small amount. And they’re like, well, I don’t have enough money to have a will. I’m like, that’s the easy stuff in your will.

It’s this other stuff like your pets, you care about and what happens if you’re disabled. That’s important. And I have some folks and they be people listening here, who might not do their estate paperwork for themselves, but they would do it for their pets. Does that make any sense, Bri?

Bri Conn, CFP®: It absolutely does, and I have seen that case before where people are like, I don’t really care to get it done, but I have my beloved pal here that I wanna make sure is taken care of. And I would love if you got it done for yourself regardless, but if it’s the pet that makes you [00:17:00] get it done, that is all right, too. Fantastic.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And by the way, not everybody has pets, but here’s what our data found in the study. We found 75% of Childfree people have pets. We’re talking like a large number. For Childfree Wealth®, we have our forums that have all the information about people. We use this for meetings and the important things to remember about their meetings and in the top right corner is who are their pets? What’s their names, what’s their type, because that matters. Now I will say, my fun part of this job is I get to see everybody’s pets. Every once in a while, a client will send me a photo. I’m like, can I share this to my wife? So my wife knows half the pets of my clients? She’s like, well, who has Cinnamon? Oh, cinnamon’s the pug, right? I’m like, she has no clue who my clients are, but she knows Cinnamon who happens to be a pug for one of our clients, and that’s because they matter to us.

Bri Conn, CFP®: . I’ve got a couple clients where their pets will come and sit and join the meeting all the time, and I love it. People usually apologize. They’re like, oh, I’m so sorry. No, don’t be sorry. I want to see [00:18:00] your pets. Please show them to me.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And we know it’s important, so that’s part of this thing is you need to create the documents. Let’s talk about how do you actually do this? So, the key is you need to make sure your documents talk about this. So one of the examples is if you go to free will.com or any of those things to get estate documents, they’ll get you basics. They don’t set up a pet trust and they do not set up a professional fiduciary to manage it for you. At Childfree Trust®, that’s part of the whole package. We serve as your medical power attorney, financial power attorney, executor, trustee, and included in there is your pet trustee. So that’s intentional.

And the documents were designed for Childfree people. So let me give you an example. When you look at the legal document and Bri I’m gonna quiz you on this because I wanna see which way you ended up on this. One of the questions in the documents is, who comes first? Your pets or the people to get your money? If I give $25,000 for the dog and the cat and then I’m gonna give the rest to my nephews. Do the nephews get money first or does the pet get money first? [00:19:00] What do you think Bri?

Bri Conn, CFP®: My dog’s coming first. Sorry, everybody.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, that’s a default option in our documents unless otherwise changed. If I have a $50,000 estate, my cat and my dog are getting set up and everybody else is getting whatever they sell leftover. And it sounds silly, but that does matter. Because, this is part of why you appoint a professional to do this. If you’ve told your nephew, Hey, by the way nephew, you’re gonna handle all this for me, they’re supposed to follow the rules. They’re supposed to be a fiduciary, but they may magically make money disappear. That no longer happens. I mean, that’s the horror story is oh, how do I make sure my pet actually gets what they want? And I did have somebody else, can I get my whole estate to my pet? You can put it all in a pet trust. You can’t actually give it to the pet. That’s kind of a technicality of that. And then when the pet passes, it can go to a charity or somebody else. That’s all possible, but you need to make sure it matches you. So next, when you’re talking about the documents, you create these documents, [00:20:00] you have to actually get ’em signed, you have to get ’em in place, and you have to set up an emergency contact system. If you create the documents you created to say, Hey, I want Jane to take my dog. How does Jane get notified?

Which sounds simple, but it’s actually very hard. If you go to the hospital and they say, Hey, who’s your emergency contact? And you say, whatever, I’m gonna put Bri out as my emergency contact. Bri needs to know who my pet sitter is and how to contact them, and when. And that’s part of what we build into the care documents of how do we do that? So then we do it at Childfree Trust® is we have a 24 7 emergency response number. You go in the hospital, we start taking care of you, and then we activate your care plan for their dog or their cat or their snake. Here’s what we need to do. I keep going back snake one, I could just picture you having to go to somebody’s house and feed ’em like mice or something.

Bri Conn, CFP®: I hate snakes, it is my worst nightmare.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And to be clear, we’re not actually gonna be the ones feeding them. We’re gonna be calling your pet center to go drop off a mouse, I [00:21:00] guess.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Be making that phone call from a different state.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: But these are the types of things we don’t think about because this is part of the process. If you have kids, you hope that your kids will check on your dog. If you’re in the hospital. My mother goes in the hospital, she has a dog. We’ll make sure the dog’s taken care of, but when you don’t, you need to create this professional team to do it for you. How does that feel, Bri?

Bri Conn, CFP®: I like it having a team who knows and can make sure that all these things are done, putting that information in there so they can find it. The care documents is not something you’re gonna be able to find somewhere else. It’s very unique to Childfree Trust® in the sense of, hey, estate planning and care documents take care of this. Putting all of that in there, I love it. Making sure, hey, we notify the person who’s taking care of the pets, getting in, contact them. How do they get into your house too? That’s another big thing. My house is locked up like Fort Knox, but there are people who do know how to get into it, and that’s [00:22:00] important.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, and part of that is also the person that you’re gonna activate so that we have a professional trustees that we work with on that, the independent trust company that actually does this, that makes the phone calls to ensure your wishes are followed. There’s a bunch of crossing T’s and dotting i’s, and I think the hard part of this is, if you’re listening to this and you’re part of the 80% of the Childfree population that has no paperwork, this is a call to action. You have to get it done. You can go to Childfree Trust®.com. You can work through our system. Relatively simple, you can go in, enter all your information, get your basic documents done, get ’em signed, get the protection so that then if anything happens, you have that support for both you and your pet. I would love if you did it for yourself, but if nothing else, do it for your pet.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Yes. if that’s what it takes to get it done, that’s what it takes, I guess.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: All right, so I’ve joked about this and my wife gets mad at me when I use this joke, but I’m still gonna do it. So my [00:23:00] joke is if my wife and I get a car crash, who makes our medical decisions? Who makes our financial decisions, and who lets our dog out? And I put it in that order. But I know that my wife is gonna be more worried about the dog than me, and she says, no. But I have a feeling she’s gonna be like, oh, you’re in the hospital. You’re fine. Who’s letting Colt out? In theory I came first, but the worry is, hey, it’s five o’clock. He wants his dinner. And by the way, he does want his dinner exactly at five o’clock. At 4:45 He tries begging for it. He is on to the minute and she’s gonna be worried about him. And I don’t want her in the hospital worrying about, oh, how do I get ahold of the pet sitter? I just wanna know that’s taken care of.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Yeah. ’cause that can be scary to know all of those things. Other things that are important to know is, okay, he’s got a bunch of things and allergies, what can he eat? How is that laid out? Where do you have to order it? Our dog gets the farmer’s dog, where is that gonna be sent to? Knowing all of those [00:24:00] things to care for your pet, we all just do that instinctively for our pets. But if somebody has to step in for you, it’s very vital that that information is provided and known so that they actually know what to do.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: I’m actually willing to bet that Chewy would chase me down if we didn’t order from them in a certain period of time. They’d be like, what is wrong with you? We should have reordered by now. If you’ve never bet a member of Chewy, they actually do send birthday cards and all that, and I swear they have a service like, Hey, you have not bought treats in a while, please, Colt needs them.

Bri Conn, CFP®: I might be wrong, but I think at one time, I don’t know if they still do, they might have actually even sent things if the pet passed away too.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: They do.

Bri Conn, CFP®: They do? Okay.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: We’ve had that, for other mess in the past. And that’s ’cause we know how important it’s.

Bri Conn, CFP®: It’s true, making sure those things are coming, showing up. We get the notification all the time. Lily’s farmer’s, dog is on the way, and here it is. And if something were to happen and say whether it be temporary disablement [00:25:00] or permanent, we passed, where’s that gonna be sent to next time? Where’s Colt’s order going to, where’s Lily’s order going to, putting all that down.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: All I know is that whatever, it’s the UPS or FedEx guy back and forth, whoever has to bring in the 50 pound bags of the special food he eats, they hate us. But it is what it is.

Bri Conn, CFP®: Okay, so after we’ve talked about all these different things. Sounds like we’ve got a few things that are incredibly important. Three Cs, essentially caretaker, who is going to take care of them? Communication and contact. How are these people gonna be contacted? And do you have that written down? And then the critical information, what’s their food like, medicine and anything else they might need to know somebody who’s caring for them. Does that sound about right? Dr. J?

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yep. That’s a good place to start. And if you haven’t done all that paperwork, you haven’t gotten that place yet, what are you waiting for?

Bri Conn, CFP®: Alright, so we have reached our final segment of Childfree Life by Design called Deliberate Detail, a segment where we share, a small, intentional [00:26:00] thing we’re doing to design amazing life. You share what it is, why it matters to us, and what it costs, if anything. So, Dr. J, if you wanna share something relating to it, taking care of pets that you have done.

Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, so what we did for Colt is we went and got all our paperwork done at Childfree Trust® and we were the first client of Childfree Trust®. Now mind you, I get the service for free because I own the company. It costs 999 a year So just listed at a $1000 and that was part of our deliberate plan for how to take care of him

Bri Conn, CFP®: Wonderful. If you have not done that already, you can go to Childfree Trust®.com and you can go ahead and get started on that and make sure you’re protecting your pets. Well, that’s all for this episode of Childfree Life by Design. Remember, intentionally choosing to invest in moments of joy is just as important as investing in your future. Until next time, happy designing.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Child-Free Life by Design. Make sure you follow the show. Leave a rating or review [00:27:00] and connect with us on social at Child-Free Insights. For more resources, guides or upcoming events, visit child free insights.com.