Roche: Law needs to keep pace
A private client solicitor has launched an online tool to help ensure pets are looked after following their owner’s death, incapacity, divorce or separation.
Rachel Roche, founder of York-based Roche Legal, said PetPact was one of six British businesses selected to join a global incubator programme run by Innovate UK in partnership with the Legal Innovation Zone in Toronto.
PetPact, a brand of Roche Legal and a registered trade mark, provides an online statement of wishes for pet ‘parents’ (owners) which sets out the names of the pet parent(s), and the guardian(s) appointed to look after the pet if the parent is no longer able to.
It also records the email of the pet’s vet, who is automatically emailed when the pact is made, so they know who to contact.
Couples have their own version of PetPact so they can specify what happens to their pet if there is a breakdown in the relationship and avoid spending “huge amounts in legal fees”. An individual PetPact costs £45, while couples are charged £55 – £5 from each one goes to animal charities.
Ms Roche said she thought of the idea five years ago as she had always felt there was a lack of adequate provision for pets. “I have a dog and two cats and they are my family.”
The solicitor said testators could attach a letter of wishes to wills on what they wanted for their pets, but that “did not go far enough”.
It would depend on executors communicating wishes, which they sometimes did not do, leading to “horrible” situations of pets trapped in houses when owners died because nobody knew they existed.
In the same way, people can bequeath a pet to someone but it is not “incumbent” on them to keep it.
“What I am trying to do is work with the law as it now is, so there is more certainty on what is going to happen to pets. I am trying to get people to think ahead of time and avoid disputes.”
The PetPact website says that, if users want it to be incorporated into their will or made legally binding, Roche Legal can help with that separately.
PetPact was launched earlier this month, funded entirely by Ms Roche. Her law firm, Roche Legal, has a team of seven full-time staff, including a consultant solicitor and also relies on external consultants.
PetPact was selected by the global incubator programme, based in Toronto, Canada, from where she returned this week.
It provides SMEs with six months of fully funded support to help them scale up globally and at the end of it, in March, she would be doing a pitch to investors.
She said the website was fully functioning and “worked like a dream” – all it needed were its first customers.
Ms Roche said judges in the UK, US and Canada were increasingly talking about pets as if they were part of the family and about their best interests. “We are looking for legislation to keep pace with what judges are saying”, so pets could be treated in a way that was “closer to how we deal with children”.
With half of the UK population owning a pet, the pet industry was “already pretty enormous” and “set for a boom”.
Ms Roche added that she would like to see PetPact building its own “bespoke platform”, so agreements could be “more dynamic”, with more options and updates for customers.
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