While queries on these lines have been coming in for a while now, the trend is still at a nascent stage in India. Tata's move, say lawyers, will generate much more awareness about the issue, prompting more people to follow suit.
Pets are not recognised as people capable of holding property or inheriting the estate of another person – they are deemed to be personal property. Therefore, while many Indians see their pets as their children, Indian law still doesn't. Hence, the law doesn't allow for either leaving anything to pets as a bequest; or creating a trust with a pet as a beneficiary.
Law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas gets a lot of enquiries from people, mainly those who are single or elderly, about pets they are very attached to, said partner Shaishavi Kadakia.
“There are ways to address this, but these methods are not fool proof,” she said. “One can leave something to a caretaker to take care of the pet, as has been the case with Ratan Tata. Or, if the pet is going to a shelter, one can give money to that. The executor of the will can be asked to keep track, but human intervention is needed and there are no guarantees.”
A report by consulting firm Redseer released last week estimated that pet owners (or pet parents) in India on an average spend close to Rs 50,000 per year on pet-care products and services, which accounts for 5-8% of their household income. India's pet care market is estimated at close to Rs 6,500 crore.Ishika Tolani, a Mumbai-based independent advocate practising family and estate laws, said a couple recently sought advice to structure their will in a way that if anything happens to them, their pets – two cats and two dogs – are taken care of, including for the visits to a veterinary doctor, regular spa for the dogs and also occasional spending on upgrade of their accessories.”We have received over a dozen queries after the news about late Ratan Tata's will,” said Tolani.
The top two areas where pet parents spend are healthcare such as vaccinations and consultations, accounting for 30% of the annual spending, followed by grooming services that take another 25%, the Redseer report said. This was followed by spending on accessories, pet day-care and walking services.
India as a country is becoming a lot more sensitive to pets, said Divi Dutta, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co. “Many don't make provisions for pets; so, consultants must make it a point to include this aspect in the discussion. This has also been a learning lesson for many advisors.”
Echoing Dutta, Jatin Popat, founder of online will-writing company WillJini, said he too is witnessing a constant rise in the mentioning of pets in wills. “We had a client, a woman, who created a private trust and transferred some funds into the trust for the care of the pet and also made one of the street dog shelter/rescue NGOs a beneficiary,” said Popat.
The trend is still restricted to metros, with most queries coming from Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Pune for WillJini.
Nikhil Varghese, cofounder of legal-tech startup Yellow, said there has been a rise in queries particularly from metros, prompting the company to come up with blogs and Insta reels to generate awareness around the issue.
