ADVERTISEMENT

The Laws That Could Crown the World's Richest Cat

The Laws That Could Crown the World's Richest Cat

(Bloomberg) -- When fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld died last week, he left behind a legacy spanning decades and possibly a sizable inheritance for his cat. Choupette, the beloved Birman that has become famous in her own right with nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram, is speculated to be at least a partial beneficiary of Lagerfeld's estimated $200 million dollar fortune. On "What'd You Miss This Week" with Joe Weisenthal, Scarlet Fu, Caroline Hyde, and Romaine Bostick, Christopher Burns, an estate attorney at Henson Efron, came on to talk about the laws that could allow Choupette the become the world's richest cat.

Burns said the vehicle he recommended for clients looking to provide for pets after their own death was naming a custodian for the animal and a trustee to oversee the inheritance. "It's important to have that check and balance," he said. "With a custodian and a trustee, I encourage clients to never name the same individual to take care of the animal as well as to watch the animal's finances."

Most animals will not be in the same tax bracket as Choupette. Burns said that he usually has to advise clients to leave more money than their initial estimates. "We spend a lot of time talking with clients who want to leave money for pets as to how much is enough and how much is too much," he said. Pets "have a certain standard of living that they're used to [and] the creator of the instrument wants to provide for them to have that experience for the rest of their life."

Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller came on after Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell's first day of testimony on Capitol Hill to discuss monetary policy and the current state of the U.S. economy. The Yale economics professor agreed with Powell that "the economy has been growing pretty smoothly," but cautioned that "there are some signs that there might be things amiss. "It's been a long time that we've been in this recovery period," Shiller said. "It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was a recession."

EquityZen CEO Atish Davda joined to discuss what is already shaping up to be a banner year for unicorns looking to go public. On Friday, Lyft filed for an initial public offering under the stock ticker "LYFT" on the Nasdaq, while headlines keep trickling out about the possibilities for rival Uber, as well as other big names like Slack and Peleton. Davda said the investor appetite is there in both supply and demand. His firm works closely with many of these companies by providing a pre-IPO secondary market that allows accredited investors to get access before they go public. "On both sides, there's been a lot of activity," he said.

Maria Espinosa is a writer, a poet and an Ecuadorian diplomat. Last fall she became the first woman from Latin America and the Caribbean to preside over the U.N. General Assembly as its president. Espinosa sat down with Scarlet Fu to talk about her goals for the remainder of her term. Espinosa stressed the importance of addressing gender inequality. "If you are to have sustainable development and inclusive sustainable development, you cannot leave 50 percent of the population behind." She said the private sector also had a role to play, and "they're not doing very well" in terms of gender parity and women in executive positions.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.