Colorado residents consider their pets as furry family members. The love and loyalty exchanged between animals and their owners are highly beneficial to both pets and pet parents, but what about when spouses who own pets choose to end their marriage? Who gets to keep the pets after a divorce in Colorado?
An experienced Colorado divorce attorney represents your best interests during all aspects of divorce, including pet custody.
Under C.R.S. § 14-10-124. Best Interests of the Child Standard, the court determines child legal (decision-making) custody and parenting time schedules for divorcing spouses with children; however, no similar law exists for determining pet custody. This often adds to the stress and legal complexity of a divorce, as individuals have strong feelings for their pets. Instead of Colorado’s custody laws applying to animals, animals fall under the category of assets during a divorce. Under C.R.S. § 14-10-113, the law states the following:
“In a proceeding for dissolution of marriage or in a proceeding for legal separation …(the court) shall set apart to each spouse his or her property and shall divide the marital property, without regard to marital misconduct, in such proportions as the court deems just after considering all relevant factors…”
In other words, as with all marital property, a pet is subject to the laws of fair and equitable property division during the marriage. Under the state’s no-fault divorce laws, spouses do not have to prove the other spouse engaged in misconduct for the court to grant the divorce. Instead, one spouse must determine that the marriage is irretrievably broken. Then, the state’s law for fair and equitable property division applies to pets during the divorce process.
Under Colorado’s divorce laws, spouses may keep their separate property, but their marital property is subject to division. Separate property refers to property owned by one spouse before the marriage, gifted to one spouse alone during the marriage, or inherited by a spouse during the marriage. Marital property includes all assets, debts, and possessions acquired during the marriage, regardless of who purchased it or whose name is on the account, title, or deed.
Under this law, if a pet belonged to one spouse before the marriage or was gifted to them or inherited by them during the marriage, that spouse has a strong case for keeping the pet as their separate property. However, if the spouses acquired the pet during the marriage, they must present their cases to the court as a dispute in a contested divorce if they are unable to resolve the matter during the settlement agreement process.
Commingling is a legal term that describes the phenomenon of one spouse’s separate asset becoming a marital asset during the marriage. For example, if one spouse owns a home before the marriage, it would appear that it is that person’s separate property, but if the other spouse spends their money, time, or talent improving the home’s value, they have a vested interest in the home and are entitled to half of the property’s increased worth.
Commingling pet ownership occurs when a pet belonged to one spouse before the marriage, but during the marriage, the other spouse participated equally in the pet’s daily care and in expenses incurred for the pet. In this case, the court is likely to treat the pet as a marital asset rather than a separate asset, giving both spouses an equal right to ownership.
Unlike an investment or retirement account, you cannot split a pet between two spouses. Instead, during settlement negotiations or mediation, the spouses may negotiate pet custody to determine who will have custody of the pet after the divorce. For instance, if one spouse wants to keep the pet and the other wishes to keep the car, they could include that in their divorce settlement agreement if they both agree. Another common alternative occurs in households with more than one pet. For example, each spouse may keep one dog, or one spouse may keep the cat while the other keeps the dog, provided both spouses consent to the arrangement. The spouses could also agree to share the pet under a custody agreement with a schedule similar to a parenting time schedule for a child.
In some cases, divorcing parents with children choose to include their pet in their child custody exchanges even though the court does not address pet custody in this way. For example, when parents share 50/50 custody of their children or one parent has primary custody and the other has weekend visitation, they exchange their dog at the same time that they exchange the children. This arrangement for dividing pet custody for divorced families also ensures that the children are not separated from a beloved family pet.
When divorcing pet owners in Colorado include mutually acceptable terms for pet custody in their divorce settlement agreement, a judge almost always signs the agreement into binding orders. The only exceptions occur when a judge believes the agreement was signed under duress or coercion.
If both spouses cannot reach mutually agreed-upon terms for their pet during divorce settlement negotiations, they may take their dispute to court in a contested divorce process. When this occurs, both spouses present testimony and evidence with the help of their Colorado divorce attorneys. A judge considers the following when determining who keeps the pet after the divorce:
A Colorado divorce lawyer with experience in pet owner divorces will present your case to the court to maximize your chances of a favorable outcome if a low-conflict resolution through a settlement agreement is not possible. Reach out to our experienced team for a free consultation on your divorce case at (303) 451-0300.
