By William C. Lhotka Of the Post Dispatch Staff
In the newest custody wrinkle, a judge has given a St. Charles man one dog
and his estranged wife the other. The couple may prefer living apart, but will
the dogs? The court order speaks to that question, too.
On Sunday, just six days after the split, the dogs will meet at a grocery
parking lot in Overland for an eight hour get together. The next day, they'll
visit a veterinarian a physical and for a determination of the emotional
effects, if any, of their separation. It's all part of an order handed down
Monday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, the first of its kind in Missouri,
The order gives the couple joint custody and visiting rights, just as
judges routinely grant joint custody and visiting rights to parents.
One dog, Fishban, an Australian shepherd mix, 3 ½ years old, goes
to Carla Julius of Hanley Hills. And for now, anyway, the other dog, 2
1/2-year old Tasselhof, a beagle mix, goes to Tony Julius of St. Charles.
The couple separated on Nov. 11. Carla Julius, a hospital employee, sought
a court orders to keep her husband from the house they had shared and from
taking the two dogs. "My dogs are my children," she said.
In an interview Thursday, Tony Julius, a sound system installer, said he
felt the same way about the dogs. So he hired a lawyer, Margo Green, just
as his wife had hired Leigh Joy Carson.
The settlement was approved Monday by Associate Circuit Judge Dennis J.
Quillin. Each party gets possession of one dog six days a week; each gets both
dogs every Sunday for four hours.
Green, Tony Julius' lawyer, said, "My argument was the judge has
jurisdiction over personal possessions. A family pet comes under the category
of personal possession because it is not a human being. I felt it was
equitable if each person had a dog.
"For people who don't have children, pets become very important,"
said Green, former treasurer of the Missouri Humane Society. She said she had
found no comparable case in Missouri, though she noted that there have been
cases in Missouri where people leave estates to Pets."
Associate Circuit Judge Samuel J. Hais has heard hundreds of divorce cases,
but never a dog custody case. He said pets generally went where the children
went. He said most major disputes over animals involved horses, which can be
worth a lot and expensive to care for. Although pet custody cases remain
uncommon nationwide, disputes are increasingly winding up in court.
In Milwaukee, a woman said she'd go to jail rather than surrender her cat.
In the end, she got custody, and her ex got visiting rights. In Pulaski,
Tenn., a pet frog died during lengthy court proceedings. An out of court
settlement was worked out for a parakeet, but the matter of Aristotle, a
doberman-Labrador, required a court order. The judge added a provision that
the dog "not be allowed to associate with ill-bred animals and that it
not be allowed to drink alcoholic beverages."
Linda Cawley, a lawyer in Denver, has made a career out of contracts and
litigation involving pets. She is consulted by lawyers throughout the country
on such legal issues as custody, visitation, who pays bills if an animal
injures someone and who decides whether pets need to be put to steep.
Serious stuff, but Tony Julius has had to suffer through jokes from his
coworkers. "I wouldn't have gone through with this it I didn't really
believe in it," he said.
The New York Times News Services provided information for this
story.
