To Love, Honor and Belly-Scratch

Then there are the legal fees. In 2000, one San Diego couple, Stanley and Linda Perkins--an anesthesiologist and a bespoke publisher respectively who owned two Porsches, a Ferrari and a house with an ocean view--spent $146,000 on their divorce battle, some of which concerned custody of a pointer-greyhound mix named Gigi. Among evidence shown to the court was a "Day in the Life of Gigi" video, shot by Linda, featuring Gigi snoozing under her chair at work, playing at the beach and cuddling at home. She got the dog.

Typically, those involved in pet custody cases are affluent, childless couples--which fits both of the cases just described. According to surveys by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Assn., pet ownership has grown in two specific demographics--young couples who are waiting longer to have children, and baby boomers whose children have grown up and left home. These childless couples develop the strongest attachments to pets. They treat them like children--the kind you can spoil with gifts and dress in cutesy outfits without worrying whether they're doing well at school or making the right kinds of friends.

And so animal custody cases increasingly resemble child-custody cases, and can be just as bitterly fought and expensive. While child psychologists are employed to determine the child's living conditions and health with each parent, so vets and animal evaluators are employed for pets. Like children, pets suffer from being tussled over. According to Deanie Kramer, a mediator for Divorce Resource Inc., one high-profile news anchor had his dogs flown back and forth from New York to Los Angeles as part of an elaborate visitation agreement. "I also had a bizarre case with a parrot," she says. "Before he gave it to her, he taught it to say [obscenities] just to embarrass her." There are also stories of spouses killing the pet to spite the other; stories of pups in washing machines, cats in microwave ovens, a strangled macaw.

The key difference between child and animal custody cases, however, is that in the former, the welfare of the child is paramount, whereas the animal's interest rarely has a bearing. The letter of the law in all 50 states is stark on the subject--a pet is property, "chattel," more like a piece of furniture than a family member. To arrange joint custody for a dog is legally equal to arguing a visitation schedule for a sofa, and many judges apply the law literally, to avoid burdening the courts with yet more custody arrangements to monitor. But then other judges, often pet owners themselves, understand the emotional difference between relating to a dining table and relating to a dog. Increasingly, these judges have ruled to protect this relationship.