MONEY MANNERS

DEAR JEANNE & LEONARD: I know some cats with a trust fund. A friend who’s not well needs to find a good home for both of his cats. To ensure that they’re well taken care of, he’s going to give whomever takes the cats $20,000 to cover the cost of any future medical expenses they might have. The reason I’m writing is that I’ve found someone who wants to adopt them. “Courtney” loves animals, and I know she’d take good care of the cats. But she recently remarried, and her husband has, until now, refused to get a cat because he says pets are too expensive. When Courtney told him about the $20,000, though, he said OK. I’m worried he might not really like animals and could wind up keeping the money but never spending any of it on the cats. Or he could even insist on getting rid of them later. What should I do? Time is running out.

• Robin

DEAR ROBIN: Redouble your efforts to find a good home for the cats, because you haven’t found one yet. If Courtney’s husband has as little integrity as you suspect, you wouldn’t want to trust him to water your houseplants, much less care for these kitties.

DEAR JEANNE & LEONARD: My children and I recently attended a fundraiser for a friend whose house burned down. I contributed $100 but accepted only $40 worth of tickets to use on the rides, games and food at the event. So my family ran out of tickets. As we were leaving the fundraiser, my 7-year-old spotted about $20 worth of unused tickets in a trash bin. I let her use them, figuring that I’d in fact paid for, but not used, $60 worth of tickets. Did I do anything wrong? The tickets my daughter found weren’t ours, and I’m afraid I set a bad example for her.

• S.B.

DEAR S.B.: Let’s hope your admirably sharp-eyed 7-year-old takes a job with Homeland Security when she grows up. They could use her.

But to answer your question: You did nothing wrong. As you say, you had in effect discarded considerably more than $20 worth of unused tickets yourself. Plus there’s nothing in what you’ve written that suggests the tickets your daughter found were in the trash by accident - no reason to think you should have returned them to the ticket booth so the person who bought them could reclaim them. So unless the beneficiary of the fundraiser somehow got less money because you used the discarded tickets, you were free to use them with a clear conscience.

DEAR JEANNE & LEONARD: In one of your columns a while back, you advised parents to split their estate evenly among their children to prevent family rifts after they died. I’d like to show the column to my grandmother, who’s having a hard time deciding how to divide her estate. Would it be possible for you to send me a copy?

• Junior

DEAR JUNIOR: Sorry, but there’s no way we wrote the column you’re referring to. While evenly dividing an estate can sometimes prevent a family rift, we never would advise parents who wanted to leave different amounts to different children not to do so just to avoid one. For one thing, there often are good reasons not to give each child the same share - for example, when one child has been a devoted caretaker and the other has had nothing to do with the parents since leaving home. Moreover, splitting an estate evenly also can cause family rifts - just ask a devoted caretaker who receives the same bequest as his or her uncaring sibling. Our advice for your grandmother? She should divide her estate as she feels is right, not in accordance with an arbitrary, one size-fits-all rule for fairness.

Jeanne Fleming and Leonard Schwarz are the authors of Isn’t It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check?

Dealing With All of the Trickiest Money Problems Between Family and Friends (Free Press, 2008). Email them at [email protected]