Under the law in the UK, and in most other countries, cats and dogs are regarded as inanimate objects; in old-fashioned English they are “chattels”. To a couple who are divorcing they are far more than chattels. They are family members and there is often, nearly always, a close emotional bond between animal and human which is why pet dogs and cats can be one of the most troublesome family assets to divide up in divorce.
All good divorces take place against a background of an amicable, businesslike approach to dividing up the family assets. An agreement is reached and the parties go their own way, usually the house goes with the wife and the children and husband’s pension remains with him. That’s the kind of practical outcome but the pets are often in a different order of complexity because of the emotional bond.
The Sunday Times has a report on this which I can refer to. They mention a partner in a law firm specialising in family law. This man says that dividing up multi-million pound assets is relatively easy compared to deciding who has “custody” of the family pet.
In one instance there was the usual back-and-forth negotiations and the lawyer reached “a visitation agreement”. It’s like dividing up contact and residence for the children. In family law matters, the children, on divorce, normally live with the wife but sometimes residence can be shared and often the husband then has access to the children on a regular basis.
And in this particular instance the law refers to a cat called Snowy. No doubt a brilliant white cat. The agreement reached was that “Snowy would spend three days with his client in London, before being taken by the housekeeper on a two hour train journey to Dorset to stay with the ex-husband”.
Extraordinary don’t you think? I’m not sure how long that arrangement would last which is another point worth making. Initial arrangements naturally evolve and change over time because the heat of the divorce fades and the parties become more businesslike and more practical.
And referring once again to Snowy, there was an arrangement that there would be “iPad contact time”. I’m not sure what that is! It’s probably a form of Internet visual contact between the pet and the husband using software like Zoom. But the lawyer’s client (the former wife) felt that her iPad time was being sabotaged by her ex-husband. She felt that he was “deliberately distracting Snowy so she wasn’t focusing on the camera”.
That seems extraordinary as well but it strongly indicates the emotional attachment the parties’ have to their female white cat. Things can get prickly.
According to The Sunday Times report dividing up the pets can lead to the biggest arguments and the most passionate battles. That’s partly because of the emotional bond and partly because they are considered to be the most prized assets in a family.
That makes sense because pets are members of the family. They have an equal value to the children at an emotional level and sometimes higher!
You mix that emotion with the emotion of divorce and it can become toxic.
Apparently the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently announced that 591,072 babies were born in England and Wales last year which is the lowest number since 1977. Set against that, pet ownership is at an all-time high. Even during the relatively short duration of the pandemic, about 3.2 million households acquired a pet. There was a surge in cat and dog ownership, particularly dogs during the Covid-19 pandemic to keep people company while they were isolated.
This by the way, incidentally, resulted in some rather poor relationships between dogs and people because the dogs were not properly socialised as unscrupulous breeders had lept into the marketplace to make a quick buck. These breeders did not socialise the animals properly which, by the way, may be why there’s been a surge in dog attacks on people in their homes. That is another story which I touch on in another article which you can read by clicking on this link if you wish.
More: Argentina divorce court allowed pets to select separated owners
One of the most high-profile arguments about who should have the pets in divorce concerned Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. That was all over the news. Heard was granted custody of their Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo.
Eamon Holmes and Ruth Langsford are in a continuing divorce dispute and part of that dispute is their 14 year old collie-cross dog, Maggie.
When Ant McPartlin and his wife of 11 years, Lisa Armstrong, divorced in 2018 the custody of their labrador, Hurley, was shared. There were problems following that arrangement apparently. When McPartlin’s new wife gave birth to their first child, Armstrong vowed to fight for sole custody of the dog. There seems to be a little bit of spite in there which is unsurprising because divorce is prone to produce that kind of emotional response.
Pets can become tools with which one party can harm the other emotionally. This happens a lot actually. It can regrettably lead to one party harming the pet to harm their former partner. The companion animals become very vulnerable in divorce even vulnerable to physical harm in extreme cases.
Antonia Barker, a partner at Hamblin Family Lawyers, said: “With most chattels there is clear proof of ownership, like a land registry for property. But pets, like art, aren’t always supported with a registration process”. This leaves ownership more flexible but I would disagree with her because in divorce legal ownership of an asset doesn’t really count for much because all the assets are up for grabs. They are all pooled together and divided amicably ideally and reasonably with the children being the prime factor in deciding the best course of action.
Like children, pets can be bargaining tools in divorce proceedings. A means to gain revenge and control over the other party.
And things can turn nasty. Sometimes high net worth individuals can agree on the division of all the assets on divorce but the whole house of cards can come tumbling down when trying to decide who keeps the dogs.
And if there are two dogs and two cats the big question is whether you keep them together because sometimes these two companion animals have a very close bond between themselves as well as between themselves and the humans. Often you would normally keep a bonded pair of animals together which can present a problem in divorce because the natural instinct is to allow one party to have on cat and the other party to have the other cat. That is a fair ‘division’ from the human perspective but unfair possibly from the cat perspective.
Like I said, it can get complicated and emotionally fraught. The process is simplified when the parties are able to take a businesslike approach while focusing on the welfare of the children and the welfare of the companion animals as a number one factor in division.
More: Animal sentience paves the way for dog and cat support payments on divorce
