Gaetano Ferro, a divorce lawyer, remembers an unusual case from a decade ago. It involved a custody dispute over a springer spaniel. What Ferro remembers most are the snickering judges in the courthouse. And he recalls that the couple finally decided the dog would spend alternate weeks with each owner.
Such a case would be less unusual, and probably less funny, today. Nearly a quarter of divorce lawyers surveyed across the U.S. have noticed an increase in pet-custody cases in the past five years, according to a recent poll of 1,500 members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. "There is a shift occurring in our society in which the ... pet is considered more a member of the family ... and therefore becomes, sadly, a part of the battle when the family disintegrates," said Joyce Tischler, founding director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization based in Northern California.
A 2004 survey found that 56 percent of pet owners would very likely risk their own lives for their pet, and 53 percent spend more now on their pet than they did three years ago. A 2001 survey by the same group, the American Animal Hospital Association, found that 83 percent of pet owners refer to themselves as their pet's "mom" or "dad."
That relationship is not acknowledged by the courts, where pets are still considered "property," no different from the silverware, the plasma TV and the living-room sofa. "In America, pets are basically chattel," said Monica Harper, a matrimonial lawyer in Hartford, Conn. As a result, many judges find fighting over pets a waste of court time, and attorneys counsel their clients to settle such disputes on their own.
The matrimonial lawyers' survey found that 90 percent of the pet-custody battles were about dogs. To Ferro, disputing who gets the cat or dog is like shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun. But for many divorcing couples, the pet is like their child.
To help judges consider the well-being of animals involved in such cases, the Animal Legal Defense Fund developed a friend-of-the-court brief five years ago. The 18-page brief is intended to show judges that "there is an unnamed third party in a custody case," Tischler said. "There is a distinction in the dog or cat's mind - believe it or not - as to who tends to be closer," she said of the relationship between pet and owners. The brief makes clear that the animal's interests should not be left out in such cases.
Generally, pets stay in the home where children primarily live, said Thomas Colin, chair of the Connecticut Bar Association's Family Law Section. But when the splitting couple does not have children, the issue becomes more complicated. During his first 10 years practicing as a matrimonial lawyer, Colin had never encountered a pet-custody issue. But just last year, he worked on two custody disputes involving dogs. In both cases, the divorcing couples did not have children. "These dogs were so important to these two couples that they stood in the shoes of a child to them," Colin said. "So I treated it that way for them."
Deciding who was granted custody of the pets meant digging up registration certificates, determining who was responsible for taking care of the animals and who had more of an attachment, he said.
Thanks to The Clarion Ledger.
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