Representing Four-legged trust funders.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL biz

CASEY CASSINIS IS USED TO GETTING MIXED reactions when she explains her fledgling law practice, The Cassinis Pet Trust Firm.

Setting up a trust for Sparky to ensure he's eared for if you precede him in death is a thoughtful act, no doubt. But it's impossible not to think of Leona Helmsley, the New York billionaire who died and left her dog $12 million, later reduced to $2 million by a judge.

"I'm actually trying to change that mentality," says Cassinis, referring to the stereotype that only the wealthy and perhaps the zany have pet trusts. "My whole plan is to try to make it available for what I call the average pet owner Joe, or better said, the average pet parent."

So it was May 7 at the annual Furry Scurry to benefit the Denver Dumb Friends League, billed as the largest benefit pet walk in the country with some 10,000 participants. Cassinis operated one of the 125 or so vendor booths at Washington Park, passing out brochures and generating varying amounts of praise, Curiosity and incredulity.

"One lady came up to me and said she'd been coining to the Furry Scurry for years, and this is the most valuable booth she'd ever seen," Cassinis says. "Conversely, someone came up as I was handing out some brochures, and I said, 'Would you like some information on pet trusts?' He laughed out loud and he said, 'Really? Pet trusts? I think I just peed myself.'"

Cassinis describes the basic pet trust as having three components consisting of the trust creator, the trustee and the caregiver.

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"The very word 'trust' means you're putting the money with a trustee who can oversee the caregiver," says Cassinis, who has a trust set up for her 5-year-old bulldog, Patch. "That way you can make sure the terms of your trust--the caregiver instructions--are followed. In other words, that person isn't getting their annual money to care for the animal unless the trust instructions are followed."

Cassinis, 31, graduated from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2005 and practiced aviation litigation before launching the Broomfield-based Cassinis Pet Trust Firm a little more than...