AR-News: (Canada) Tails of woe: pets front and centre in custody battles

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

SUSAN SCHWARTZ
The Gazette


Monday, March 08, 2004




We all know couples who fight like cats and dogs. Increasingly, there are 
couples who fight over cats and dogs. For custody.
In one such case handled by Montreal lawyer Helen Sanders, each of the 
spouses in a divorcing couple was seeking sole custody of their two young children. 
Both also wanted the dog.
"My instinct was that the dog was not wanted by the parties out of 
sentimental considerations for the dog, per se," observed Sanders, a partner in the firm 
of O'Hanlon, Sanders, Cheng. "In this heated litigation, the parties 
considered that if they got the dog, they would get the children, as the children were 
so attached to the dog."
Ultimately, the parties agreed the dog would go where the children went. When 
they settled on joint custody - for the children and the dog - it probably 
made the transition between the two homes easier, Sanders noted in an e-mail.
In another file, a couple was having a tough time separating amicably. They 
were arguing over their property, which included their dogs. "The problem was 
that both my client and her ex-boyfriend had come into the relationship with a 
dog each. And these were big dogs."
The dogs had grown close. At the heart of the dispute, Sanders explained, was 
whether each dog would return to his original owner or whether the owners 
could share them.
Her client wanted joint custody, "as she didn't want the dogs to pine for 
each other." The ex-boyfriend wanted a clean break. Ultimately, they came to a 
detailed agreement that provided for joint custody on a three-month trial basis, 
with a proviso that if it didn't work, both dogs would go and live with the 
ex-girlfriend. If she, in turn, couldn't handle the two dogs, she would 
"transfer custody" of both to her ex-boyfriend.
Fortunately, Sanders recalled, there was "a very nice and canine-friendly 
lawyer on the opposite side who took the concerns of the clients seriously."




full story:

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/columnists/story.asp?id=0AF4A27
E-C13D-4BD9-A6E2-C4E262644199 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040308/5a61e786/attachment.html