← The Probate Archive
— Collection · 7 cases
Pets
A dog cannot inherit. Neither can a cat, a horse, or a parrot — in every US state, in the UK, and in France, animals are property, and property cannot own property. What people actually create is a pet trust, and the difference between doing that well and doing it like Leona Helmsley is about ten million dollars.
The dog that got $12 million· 8-min readFlorida
Leona Helmsley
She left two grandchildren nothing and a Maltese named Trouble twelve million dollars. A Manhattan judge cut the dog to $2M and gave the grandchildren $6M. Then Trouble retired to a hotel in Sarasota with a security detail.
£50,000, three dogs, no headline· 7-min read
Alexander McQueen
Everyone remembers the designer who left money to his dogs. Almost nobody remembers the number: £50,000 out of £16 million, about three-tenths of one percent. It is the version of this bequest that works — and under English law, the version nobody could have enforced.
The chihuahua with the Escalade· 8-min readFlorida
Gail Posner
A Miami Beach heiress left her waterfront mansion and a reported $3 million trust to three dogs, and roughly $26 million to the household staff who cared for them. Her son received $1 million and filed suit. The house sold for $8.4 million.
The countess who never existed· 8-min readFlorida
Gunther the German Shepherd
For thirty years a line of German Shepherds has been reported as the richest dog on earth, heir to a German countess. Reporters checked. There is no countess. There never was. The dog does, however, own a mansion on Brickell Avenue — which is a different and more interesting fact.
The cat who cannot own a bank account· 8-min readStill open
Karl Lagerfeld
He told interviewers his Birman cat was an heiress. French law says an animal is property, and property cannot inherit. Seven years after his death the estate is still tangled with the French tax authorities, and the woman caring for Choupette says nobody has been paid anything.
The stray who got the villas· 8-min read
Maria Assunta & Tommaso
A 94-year-old Roman widow handwrote a will leaving roughly €10 million — apartments in Rome and Milan, land in Calabria — to a black stray cat she had picked up four years earlier. Italian law does not let a cat take anything. What she actually created was a search, and a promise.
Five real bequests and one useful document· 9-min read
The animals who inherited
A cat in Buckinghamshire holds a Guinness record set in 1988. A border collie in Nashville has $5 million. A chimpanzee in Wauchula, Florida costs more than $30,000 a year and is not named in anyone's will. Sorted by what is actually documented — and what a working pet trust costs.
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These are not our cases. Everything on this page is drawn from published court records and news reporting, cited below. It is general information about how probate and trust law works — not legal advice, and not a prediction about any case. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Other states' law differs from Florida's, which is usually the whole point of the story.