Information for Solicitors and Executors

Bequests, Will-writing and Estate Management

Leaving a bequest gift in a Will to The Lost Dogs’ Home is a wonderful and compassionate thing for anyone to do. These special gifts make a real difference to improving the lives of thousands of lost and abandoned dogs and cats in the future.

This page has been written especially to help Solicitors find useful information about creating Wills for clients who wish to leave a gift in their Will to help support the work of the Home in the future. 

It also contains helpful and practical information for Executors and Trustees administering estates in which the Will-writer has kindly left a bequest gift to the Home in their Will. 

Information on this page includes:

• Our suggested wording for remembering the Home in Wills for Solicitors and Trustee Companies
• Information about how to notify The Lost Dogs’ Home about being a beneficiary of an estate
• How you can inspire more charitable bequests to help us care for more lost and abandoned pets
• Our contact details if you’d like to discuss anything with a member of the friendly Gifts in Wills and Estate Administration Team at the Home.

Suggested wording for including a gift to the Home in your client’s Will

Exploring if your clients would like to support any of their favourite charities or causes through their Will is such a great way to help their values to live on through the instructions that they provide to you.

Over a quarter of our annual income arrives in the kind bequest gifts left to the Home from animal-lovers. We receive no ongoing support from the Government, so we’re especially grateful to each and every thoughtful gift in Will that we receive. 

Below is our suggested wording for including a bequest gift to The Lost Dogs’ Home in your client’s Will:

“I give to The Lost Dogs’ Home, (ABN 84 004 789 726) of 2 Gracie Street, North Melbourne, Victoria 3051 a gift of (insert your choice of a figure) percent share of my residuary estate for its general purposes.”

If your client would like their gift to be used for a specific purpose or to be applied to a certain area of our work at the Home, we would appreciate discussing this with you or them in advance. 

Discussing this in advance will help us to ensure that, when the time comes that the Home receives their kind final gift, we can properly accommodate their instructions and fulfil their final wishes.

Estate Administration – Please let us know about your client’s final wishes and instructions

When it is time for an Executor or Trustee to administer an Estate in which a gift has been left to The Lost Dogs’ Home, we would appreciate it if you or your Solicitor could please assist us in the following ways:

1. Please notify us about the gift in the Will as soon as possible

It would be incredibly helpful if you could get in touch with us early on in the Estate Administration process to advise us that a gift has been left to the Home. We also ask that you or your Solicitor please provide us with a copy of the Will in which we’ve been named as a beneficiary alongside a copy of the Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration for the estate. 

This allows us to properly identify the Will-writer, be aware of any special wishes or instructions connected to the gift or understand if there are any specific restrictions on how we can use their kind final gift.

2. Tell us more about the wishes of the Will-writer

Please share as much information as possible about the Will-writer’s wishes at the time you notify us about their gift. We would also like to have an opportunity to thank any remaining family or friends of the Will-writer and making sure we can appropriately honour their memory and acknowledge their kind bequest gift when it arrives.

These actions allow us to respect a Will-writer’s final wishes, honour their memory, understand any specific instructions they may have left, and maximise the positive impact that their final donation can have on the thousands of lost and abandoned dogs and cats that come through our doors each year.

One quick and easy way for you to let us know all about an Estate and the Will-writer’s wishes is to complete our simple online information form below, which will be sent to our friendly Gifts in Wills and Estate Administration Team. 

They can then get back in touch with you to discuss the bequest gift further, provide you with any information that you might need in connection with the Estate Administration, and answer any questions you may have.