Forget the cutlery! It's pets making divorces bitter

By Pauline Askin

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - 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, particularly childless or heterosexual pairs, to share access to pets after they split but the law in most nations is not equipped for this.

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.

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.