Estate planning as a Rover account holder

Rover is an online marketplace where pet sitters and dog walkers book pet-care services — boarding, house sitting, drop-in visits, doggy day care, and dog walking — through a verified personal account. Rover collects payment from the pet owner, holds it, and then pays the sitter through its payment processor, Stripe, by direct deposit to the sitter's bank account. The estate-relevant assets are the unpaid earnings (money Rover owes the sitter for completed services), plus the sitter's account, profile, and booking history. Rover does not publish a deceased-sitter or estate-transfer process, and a sitter account is tied to one identity-verified person. On the pet-owner side the account holds no balance, but it can hold booked and prepaid stays that the estate must cancel; Rover's published Extenuating Circumstances Policy names death among the events that can make a cancelled stay eligible for a full refund.

After a Rover account holder dies, A Place for Rover, Inc. may transfer earnings to a designated recipient, but this is handled case by case. The outcome depends on the documentation provided and is entirely at A Place for Rover, Inc.'s discretion.

What happens at death

Rover does not publish a dedicated deceased-sitter or estate-succession process. A sitter account is tied to one identity-verified person, and there is no documented beneficiary designation and no self-service account transfer. The practical estate asset is the unpaid earnings — money Rover holds for completed services that has not yet reached the sitter's bank account. Rover holds payment and releases it to the sitter two days after a service is completed, after which the funds appear in the Processing Payments section and Stripe automatically transfers them to the sitter's bank account by direct deposit; banks may take up to five business days to post the deposit. So at death there may be earnings that have been released but not yet deposited, or services completed but not yet released. Because Rover has no published procedure for this situation, the estate would recover those earnings by contacting Rover support with proof of death and proof of authority to act for the estate, and Rover reviews the request individually — hence case-by-case: the earnings are money owed that may be claimable, but the timeline, documentation, and outcome are not publicly documented and are determined by Rover on request. Whether the sitter account or profile itself can continue under another person is not addressed by any published Rover policy and would require contacting Rover. Three published clauses do bear on the estate. Terms section 20 states that the agreement "will be binding on and will inure to the benefit of the legal representatives, successors and assigns of the parties hereto" and that the Terms "will continue to apply even after your relationship with Rover ends" — Rover therefore contemplates a legal representative on the other side of the contract, even though it publishes no process for one. Terms section 9.10 provides that, for a Service Provider in the United States, Rover is appointed agent for accepting payments and that "in the event of non-delivery of such payment, your sole recourse is against Rover", which places an unpaid-earnings claim squarely against Rover. And Rover's Extenuating Circumstances Policy expressly lists "Serious illness or death of a sitter, owner, or their immediate family member that requires a hospital visit" among the events that can make a cancelled stay eligible for a full refund — the one published Rover policy that names death. Practically, every documented control (deactivating the account, cancelling a booking, downloading the earnings file) sits behind the decedent's login, so an executor who does not have their credentials has one documented route: a written request to Rover Support.

Frequently asked questions