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Divorce - who gets the pets?
24/04/2008 21:23 - (SA)
Sydney - Forget the family silver
or the car. Increasing numbers of couples who split up have a
greater bone of contention - who gets the family pet?
With pets being treated more as one of the family than just
an animal, the fate of Fido or Cuddles is becoming a growing
problem which lawyers are taking on board, drafting "petimony"
contracts and sparking a new focus on animal law issues.
Michelle Brown, a family law expert from Sydney firm Watts
McCray, said it's becoming more common for couples to share access
to pets after they split but the law in most nations was not
equipped for this.
No visitation for an armchair
The law in Australia, the United States and Britain for
example, treats pets as property like furniture - and there's
no custody or visitation for an armchair - which has led to
written agreements over custody or support being drawn up out
of court.
"The outcome is always better if the couples can come to
some arrangement as the only way pets can be dealt with legally
are as items of property," Brown told Reuters.
The trend has hit the headlines in recent years with
several high-profile celebrity battles over pets.
Celebrity battles
Jake Gyllenhaal was reported to have kept German Shepherd
Atticus after splitting with Kirsten Dunst but the actress
retained partial custody.
Drew Barrymore was reported to have
fought with her ex-husband Tom Green to keep Labrador Flossie
who once saved the couple by waking them up during a house
fire.
But it's not just celebrities squabbling over four-legged
friends with lawyers reporting that the number of cases is
growing although there are no figures to quantify this growth
as most cases do not go to the courts.
Many couples manage to work out their own agreements for
their pets or use mediators.
Lower birth rate makes pets more important
Anne Hollonds, the head of Relationships Australia New
South Wales, a non-profit organisation focused on family
dispute resolutions, said pets have taken on a more significant
role in families due to the lower birth rate.
"So when a relationship splits up, then the pets are as
important as the kids," she told Reuters.
"The pets have historically gone with the children but
there are now more couples without children who have pets so
then it becomes an issue of which adult gets the pet."
Lawyers said it was impossible to know how many petimony
contracts were being drawn up with most done outside the
courts.
Pets in wills
Philip King, a Sydney solicitor at a family-owned firm,
said the area of petimony was still new but there was a
significant number of pets being named as beneficiaries in
wills which was covered by the law.
"I often come across cases of people making a will and
they've got a companion pet and might be living on their own so
they make provision for the pet to be cared for by another
person and leave a fund for this," he said.
- Reuters
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