Getting Divorced But Who Gets The Family Pet?

In England and Wales, the law considers pets as chattels and as such there is no specific legislative provision in relation to the ownership of pets on divorce or separation and very limited case law.

Such matters may however arise as an ancillary issue within financial proceedings. Case law examples where such issues have been considered, and the approach taken by the Courts, include the following:

Divorce cases involving family pets

1. S v S [2008] EWHC 519 (Fam)

In this case, the Court had regard to the wife’s wish to keep her horses and noted that it would have been unreasonable to have awarded her sufficient means to enable her to keep up her life with horses, if the parties’ means had been insufficient to permit the husband comfortably to accommodate such spending. As long as the husband’ s income was well able to permit him to continue to finance an aspect of the wife’s life that had been integral to the marriage, such an award was not unfair.

However, if the husband were to be made redundant or he retired, the horses would become an unjustifiable extravagance and the wife should plan accordingly.

2. RK v RK [2011] EWHC 3910 (Fam)

With this case, the wife made a claim to a painting and to one of the family dogs. On the latter issue, the Judge said that he did not consider it appropriate to make any order in respect of one of the dogs because, on the evidence he had heard, they had been looked after principally by the husband.

Pets in divorce proceedings – the approach taken by the Courts

The general approach in relation to chattels is that, ideally, the division should be agreed by way of a schedule denoting the destination of items. Unless the value of the chattel is significant, the Court may be reluctant to deal with such issues on the basis of proportionality.

If the division of chattels cannot be agreed, then a document known as a Scott Schedule should be prepared to include the reasons (briefly) why a particular item, e.g. a family pet, is sought by a party. It would be unusual for family pets to be routinely included in a list of chattels, however, save perhaps where their value is significant, for example pedigree animals from which an income is derived from breeding — therefore, unless there is a dispute, family pets will usually not be referred to at all.

In the event of a dispute, the Court’s approach will be the same as for any other asset and the proportionality of the costs of litigating such issues will be one of the main considerations. Issues of the welfare of the animal are very unlikely to be considered, the focus will instead be on ownership.

Judges may take a dim view of disputes regarding family pets being brought before them, given the limited resources of the Courts and the provisions of the Family Procedure Rules 2010, SI 2010/2955, 1.1 (the overriding objective) which provides that dealing with a case justly includes…

“allotting to it an appropriate share of the court’s resources, while taking into account the need to allot resources to other cases”.

The parties are therefore likely to be encouraged to settle the matter between them or utilise a form of non-Court dispute resolution, for example, mediation to reach a sensible agreement.