Spanish law change gives pets a chance of ‘co-parenting’ | Abroad

Similar rules already apply in Portugal and France. In Spain, pet custody came to the fore last October when a judge ruled that a divorcing couple would have joint custody of their one-year-old Border Collie dog Panda. That ruling, according to Spanish media, marked “a step towards the recognition of pets as living creatures under the law.”

Lawyer Lola Garcia, who was in charge of the Panda case at the time, tells Reuters news agency that “animals are part of a family. When partners decide to separate, the fate of the animal must be weighed just as much as the fate of the other family members.”

Spain has a relatively large number of pets. Until now, the spouse who had “formal ownership” of a pet, often because that person had registered the animal, was given custody of the animal in the event of a divorce.

—