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I’ve heard of nasty child custody battles, but I’d never thought of the same for pets. However, after reading about the concept in a recent Huffington Post article I don’t find it that surprising. After all, pets are like children to many people and even those that aren’t are still beloved by their owners. It’s no surprise that either divorcing party wouldn’t want to part with their pet.
Pet custody has recently become a more contentious issue. Cases have risen 23% and Harvard Law now offers a course in the field. While I imagine that pet custody struggles are not as terrible as child custody ones are at times, because pets don’t feel the same emotions on being fought over as children do, they can still become unpleasant.
How exactly does a pet custody case work? In the past they were considered property along with inanimate objects like books or china, and the ruling went that whoever bought the pet kept it. But what if a married couple bought the pet together?
Such cases made the field more complicated, but it truly began to change once judges and lawyers started acknowledging that pets are part of the family, not the furniture, and that both parties might feel real emotional attachment towards them.
Just as there is no standard in child custody battles, there is no longer any standard for pet custody issues either. Lawyers quoted in The Huffington Post article list several cases both of high contention over parties between pets, or where the parties settle amicably for the sake of their pets.
Some couples are so close to settlement, not having created a court case over their divorce, and then the agreement falls to pieces literally “on the court steps” over the family dog. Conversely, another instance of a couple is cited where the parties decided to keep living together in their home until their very sick dog passed away.
They wanted their dog to live out its life in comfort and stability, and wouldn’t let their own problems interfere with that. Lucky for them, dogs don’t probably notice or care about their “parents” fighting at quite the same level that children do.
The most outrageous of the cited cases involves a couple who actually agreed to share custody: but of their dog’s ashes. The arrangement worked out for a while, until one party accused the other of putting ashes from the fireplace into the urn.
What I find interesting is that all of the mentioned stories in The Huffington Post are about dogs. I can’t find anything about custody battles over cats, though I’m sure it must happen as well.
Perhaps more interesting cases happen over dogs because the canines require more maintenance and thus there are more aspects to consider in a dog custody case. For example, in a reversal of the previous styles of pet custody ruling, a judge ruled against the husband who’d purchased the dog because the man traveled too much for work to take proper care of it.
Pets really are family members, and though they are not nearly as sensitive to fighting as children, those in a divorce situation should try to put their desires aside and consider what’s best for the pet so as to avoid any fighting over it.
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*(This image by KeithBurtis is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
