This letter is in response to the gentlemen who wrote about pets and child-like protection in legal cases.
In being a counselor, I have witnessed numerous times a couple splitting and one person retaining the family pet while the other person loses all contact. To the individual who loses the pet, it is often voiced as extremely painful. Is it as painful as losing a child, or can you compare it to such? I don’t know. But what I do know that some persons who lose a pet speak about this years later with sadness and grief. It feels like a huge loss in their lives.
I think it is important when looking at all assets in a split/divorce that the pet that was cherished by the family be seen as something highly valuable.
I certainly hesitate to unsympathetically judge a relationship so important to a person.
Samantha Abernathy
Juneau