![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Woman-and-Dog-300x286.jpg\")
<\/a>Though clearly not children, family pets seem to fall into a category quite different from china and couches. Under Florida law, there is no provision for assigning ownership of the family pet and they are distributed along the lines of personal property. In a few states, California, Illinois and Alaska, the state legislatures have begun to recognize that when a family goes through divorce, issues regarding pet care, custody, and access are often emotionally fraught.<\/p>\nFor example, California law now provides:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court, at the request of a party to proceedings for dissolution of marriage or for legal separation of the parties, may assign sole or joint ownership of a pet animal taking into consideration the care of the pet animal.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Florida judge waded into the fray and awarded equal time sharing to the pooch parents:<\/p>\n
Dog, Roddy:\u00a0<\/em>The former Husband, shall have custody of the parties’ dog \u201cRoddy\u201d and the former Wife, shall have visitation every other month beginning October 1, 1993. The visitation shall begin on the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month.<\/p>\nThe husband appealed and the trial court ruling as reversed with express instructions to the trial court to \u201caward the animal pursuant to the dictates of the equitable distribution statute.\u201d \u00a0Until the Florida legislature amends our dissolution statute, family pets are more like furniture than friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In our family law practice, we are beginning to have many serious discussions regarding how the family pet will be handled when the dissolution judgment is entered. In one case, the party who felt betrayed at the end of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":717834,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,62,64,63,65,98,97,94,95,96],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-divorce","tag-divorce-attorney","tag-divorce-lawyer","tag-jacksonville-divorce-attorney","tag-jacksonville-divorce-lawyer","tag-jacksonville-florida-divorce-attorney","tag-jacksonville-florida-divorce-lawyer","tag-pet-custody","tag-pet-timesharing","tag-pets-in-divorce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/717834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.cc-lawoffice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Woman-and-Dog.jpg\")
<\/a>Though clearly not children, family pets seem to fall into a category quite different from china and couches. Under Florida law, there is no provision for assigning ownership of the family pet and they are distributed along the lines of personal property. In a few states, California, Illinois and Alaska, the state legislatures have begun to recognize that when a family goes through divorce, issues regarding pet care, custody, and access are often emotionally fraught.<\/p>\n