The 'De-Chattelization' of Companion Animals through Family Law Legislation: How Alaska's H.R. 147 Has Dismantled the Traditional Property Law View of Pets

• Author: Morgan Chandler Handy (2017)
• Position: Third Place, 2017 Howard C. Schwab Memorial Essay Contest; Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana, J.D. 2017; judicial law clerk, Montana Fifth Judicial District Court.
• Pages: 169-182

169

The “De-Chattelization” of Companion

Animals through Family Law Legislation:

How Alaska’s H.R. 147 Has Dismantled

the Traditional Property Law View of Pets

MORGAN CHANDLER HANDY*

Dogs are chairs; they’re furniture; they’re automobiles, they’re

pensions. They’re not kids.1

—Judge John Tomasello, New Jersey Superior Court

Introduction

Over 65 million households in the United States have a pet, otherwise

known as a companion animal.2 Companion animals are dened as “animals

who live and share their lives with human beings, who are responsive

to and interact emotionally with their guardians, and who are valued as

ends in themselves.”3 The term “companion animal” has been preferred

1. Eric Kotloff, All Dogs Go to Heaven . . . Or Divorce Court: New Jersey Un“Leashes”

A Subjective Value Consideration to Resolve Pet Custody Litigation in Houseman v. Dare, 55

vill. l. rev. 447 (2010).

2. Animal Sheltering, Humane Soc’y of the U.S., U.S. Pet Ownership Estimates, animal

shelterinG, https://www.animalsheltering.org/page/pets-by-the-numbers (last visited Jan. 24,

2019).

3. Debra Squires-Lee, In Defense of Floyd: Appropriately Valuing Companion Animals in

Tort, 70 n.y.U. l. rev. 1059, 1098 n.2 (1995).

* Third Place, 2017 Howard C. Schwab Memorial Essay Contest; Alexander Blewett

III School of Law at the University of Montana, J.D. 2017; judicial law clerk, Montana Fifth

Judicial District Court.

Published in Family Law Quarterly, Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 2018. © 2019 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof

may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.