For couples with pets, a split usually means just that. Steve and Lynelle, the advice team over at The Herald Bulletin, recently responded to one Madison County, Indiana man facing this issue.

After settling the standard business of finances and property, he and his ex-wife were left fighting over custody of their dog. It was his to begin with, but she was now threatening to sue over custody of the pooch. She had apparently become really attached to the dog and demanded they share custody of it as if it were a child.

"I told her that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard."

In fact, as advice man Steve tells it, a number of states are actually in the process of reconsidering the status of pets as mere property. Some courts have even gone so far as to set up parenting plans for pets, including custody visits!

Both Steve and Lynelle agree the man will most likely win full custody of his dog if his ex-wife takes him to court. "Despite your wife's attachment to the animal, your attachment goes back before you met her so she would need an extreme argument (such as documented pet abuse) to take the dog from you," Steve explained.

We're pet lovers, and dog lovers all the more, but joint custody for something that drinks out of the toilet seems a little nuts. Don't these people have lives? And the idea that a court would even waste its time with something so silly says more about the litigious nature of our culture than anything else.

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