Pet Custody

Tracy Hightower-Henne: On today’s podcast, you’re going to hear about pet custody.

Susan Reff: Yay.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Woof, woof. I was almost going to say Susan doesn’t have any pets, but she has pets.

Susan Reff: I do. I have two cats.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: And do you know that in my will, you’re going to get my two cats?

Susan Reff: I think you told me that only if.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, actually, I don’t think my husband wants them, even if just I die. So then you’ll have four cats, but I’m not going to die soon.

Susan Reff: That’s a good plan. Not to die soon. I don’t have my pets covered in my will. Maybe that’s something that I should talk about with my estate planning attorney, Tasha.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh yeah. I think you have a pretty easy access to Tasha.

Susan Reff: I do. I do. And we will talk about that down the road about how you can plan for your pets and your estate plan. But today we’re really going to focus on like how pets are dealt with when couples divorce.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yes. So they are definitely dealt with. Yeah, we have stories,

Susan Reff: Lots of stories.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: We’re dealing with a lot of horse cases right now.

Susan Reff: Yeah, I mean. It’s not just, you know, the dog, the family dog. There’s a lot

Tracy Hightower-Henne: More to it. Sometimes it’s a lizard, really, or a snake. Do you like to ride horses? No, I’m laughing because I can’t picture you on a horse.

Susan Reff: I actually have a fear of horses. I’m not afraid of a lot of things, but I’m afraid of horses.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: What’s the fear of horse phobia?

Susan Reff: Equine, a phobia, maybe, I don’t know.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s a good one. I mean, that’s a good guess.

Susan Reff: I. So I didn’t grow up with a dog, and I didn’t grow up near like a family farm where I got to be around horses, so I went to camp in fifth grade and they put me on like the Old Lady Horse and they were like. And it was just like, Walk around the circle. There was no trail or anything. And so that’s been that’s the only time I’ve ever ridden a horse.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, I thought there was more to it, like you fell off or something. Oh, so the phobia is from what?

Susan Reff: No, the phobia probably existed before the Old Lady Horse. I think the phobia is the fear of the unknown and that they’re very large. And to me, in my mind, animals in general are unpredictable, right?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Like so aren’t people are too right?

Susan Reff: Yeah, but I almost feel like I’m more likely to get kicked by a horse than a person.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: What’s the fear of people whom human phobia?

Susan Reff: Well, if you’re if it’s a crowd is not a agoraphobia? I don’t

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Know. I don’t know, either. Okay. So pet custody, pet custody.

Susan Reff: So a couple of things to think about when going into a divorce and you have pets, right? Like, I think people don’t think about this, you know, they’re thinking about their kids, they’re thinking about the house, they’re thinking about their money. And maybe. You know, probably if they have 10 horses, they’re thinking about the horses, but if they have one horse, maybe or a dog.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Does anyone ever have one horse? I think so. Oh, I’m not. I don’t have a horse, so I feel like horses are a multiple thing, but I may be wrong.

Susan Reff: Well, so I think there’s like horses where people have an acreage and they have a lot of land and they have three or four horses, and then they maybe house other people’s horses.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Right.

Susan Reff: And that’s where I think like the people, I know that own horses, they own them because their kids ride them and then they store them at the farm. That’s, you know, out, you know, three or four miles

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Out of town. So a lot of things that happen in our cases for horses. We’re starting with horses is horses are expensive. No kidding. So so there’s the people that either have the horses on their own property or when they store them, which I think is called boarding. They have to pay really expensive boarding fees. So then when you talk about a divorce, we often are talking about who actually wants the horses and who then actually wants to pay for the boarding because it’s often not the same person.

Susan Reff: Oh yeah. So, you know, I think the bottom line for people to know is in Nebraska. Pets are viewed as property, right? They aren’t viewed as another family member, another child, they’re treated like any other piece of property in the

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Divorce, like the couch

Susan Reff: Or the Jeep or the house, even. It’s going to be potentially divided.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: You’re going with the higher value things right, right?

Susan Reff: But I’m just trying to think of all the different property pieces that we think about when we’re doing a divorce and you throw a dog, cat, horse, snake, whatever it might be in that category. So property in a divorce is split usually equitably, and that can be 50 50 or something else, depending on the judge or the settlement that happens. So how do you split a dog, 50 50?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, you don’t. Well, you can write. You can have and you don’t call it a parenting plan, but you have a pet custody plan. So we’ve done those. And then within those pet custody plans, people have to talk about the cost. So are they sharing the vet costs? What happens when their dog gets older? Transportation. Sometimes people will transport the dog with the kids, right? So they’ll drop off the kids with the dog and the dog will go where the kids go. And I think sometimes that works out pretty well. If the dog isn’t huge, right, that wouldn’t work with my dog who’s kind of like a horse.

Susan Reff: Let me ask you this in your experience when you’re writing these pet custody agreements, does one person ultimately own the dog then and then it just kind of goes, or is it I? It probably falls on the person that’s agreed to pay all the expenses.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, it’s definitely unique in every situation, so we can write them where one person is awarded the dog and the other person just gets visitation rights.

Susan Reff: See, this is starting to sound like your children, right? Right.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: But it isn’t something that’s really important, though to is. Sometimes people don’t have kids, right? So then the dog and the cat or the horse or the lizard and the snake are literally their children, right? So this becomes a really important piece for them, where also because sometimes people have to have one thing to argue about, and if there aren’t kids, then they argue about the pets and all of that. But so it’s really important, I think, for the people that don’t have kids that this becomes their child in. That alternative sense,

Susan Reff: So I just finished a case like literally the ink is probably still wet and the people had no children and they had a dog when they they were living together at the beginning of their case and they sold the house. And so that’s when that’s when the separation occurred. So it was kind of in the middle of the case. She took the dog with her. He. Didn’t offer any payment, any you know, here’s some money for the dog, I want to see the dog, nothing in our client was really active with the dog. She was very outdoorsy, is very outdoorsy, would take the dog with her everywhere. Kind of gotten this like dog walking group in her neighborhood. They would walk together and socialize, and it was very social for her. And at the end of the case, he he said he wanted the dog and that was surprising because she had had the dog the whole time. He’d never mentioned anything about the dog. And then he said he wanted the dog. And at that point, you know, that caused her emotions to go very high because she was caught off guard, didn’t think this was coming and then was like, You know, how dare he? At this point in the case, now you’re asking about the dog. You know, you haven’t said one thing about the dog the whole time. So then we did the whole thing like, well, initially, who paid for the dog? Who did who did the day to day grooming, who did the day to day cleanup after the dog who walked the dog who took the dog to the vet just like you do with kids, almost right, you start talking about who cared for the kids to help determine if maybe that parent should have custody.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: And also, one of the factors that’s important in Nebraska law is who license the dog at the Humane Society, whose name? And while that doesn’t always matter for things like title on a house or a car, that can be one factor that plays into who should be awarded a pet if a judge ultimately has to make a decision.

Susan Reff: Right? Yeah.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Have you ever had a trial on a pet custody?

Susan Reff: I have not. So in my case, it did ultimate. So we did a settlement response and we laid out all the factors of like, Listen, she’s been the person who’s cared for the dog. It was her idea to get the dog. He agreed to it, but she was the one who went and picked up the dog, blah blah blah. And we didn’t hear anything back on that. So I think that they just were like, Oh yeah, we’re not going to win that if we go to court. So. So I have not litigated a animal ever.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: My only litigation experience with an animal was with a camel, a camel, a camel. I think it was only one hump, which became very important between valuation of one hump versus two hump. And so the story was,

Susan Reff: This is going to be good.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Our our clients had live nativity scenes. And so when they got divorced, it was clear if I recall that one person was the person who was always the nativity person set up. And so that person was going to receive all the animals. And apparently no one cared about the other value of the goats and what else is in it. I haven’t seen

Susan Reff: Three wise men. Animals, I don’t know. Yeah, I think I mean, gee, barnyard animal type things I don’t know.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Bears No.

Susan Reff: It’s legal to own a bear in Nebraska. I don’t even think you can get a license. I did have to look that up one time.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So it came down to the camel. And I don’t even recall if our client or the other client, the other party, got the camel or what. But we were arguing over the value of a camel, and we did some research on Google of how you value a camel, like if you had to sell it and then I don’t think you can actually sell camels. It was this whole thing. All I recall was that it came down to one hump versus two humps.

Susan Reff: The value is different, yes. So that’s another thing to think about is sense. An animal is considered property. If one person gets it right, like if Client A gets the camel and they’re very, very valuable. I don’t know. How much do you recall how much they said camels go for?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: It was over ten thousand.

Susan Reff: Oh, wow. So yeah.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: And if you think about some of our judges reactions and I won’t name which judge we were in front of, but this judge has been on the bench for a while on this judge specifically said I didn’t think I’d ever hear about evaluation of a camel, but here we are.

Susan Reff: Well, and ten thousand is not something to just brush off, right? So that ten thousand dollars goes in that person’s column for property settlement or property equalization. And then if all things being equal, you get the camel, you’re up ten thousand right and you got to pay out to the other person.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s right.

Susan Reff: I saw two. I saw two two hump camels recently locally. No, when we were in Madison, Wisconsin.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, Madison, Wisconsin,

Susan Reff: Madison, Wisconsin. And we went to the zoo and they had two two hump camels.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: One of these more exotic than the other one, the humps.

Susan Reff: I have no idea which is more exotic than the other, but we we pondered if a camel is more more closely related to a deer or a horse, a giraffe for a long time. These are things I talk to my kid about when trying to get his brain, you know? And ultimately, he decided the camels were really cute, and if he could ever ride one, that maybe he would want to.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: But but more related to

Susan Reff: Which we we thought that their feet look a lot like the feet of deer. Yes. So based on the feet,

Tracy Hightower-Henne: It’s

Susan Reff: A deer. It’s it’s yeah, in the deer family, but very valuable at ten thousand plus dollars, probably.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Have you ever ridden a camel?

Susan Reff: Ok, I’ve ridden a horse once. Oh, I have you think I’ve ridden a camel?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So now we have a phobia of camels. There’s there’s got

Susan Reff: To be a thing. Well, and I also feel like you shouldn’t really just ride on and

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Like at like a circus or something, you know, you didn’t get on one.

Susan Reff: We will have to talk about my hatred of circuses and other time.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Ok, but as a child, no. Maybe you didn’t have the hatred yet.

Susan Reff: No, I did not ride on any. I’ve not ridden exotic animals.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I don’t know if the. Yes. Yes, we did all those things as as children. I definitely wrote an elephant. What? You know, circus? Yeah, you get on and there’s like the little basket thing and you just sit there and maybe it walks like ten feet. Wow. And you feel like you’re like in a safari, but really, you’re just at a circus.

Susan Reff: Huh.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Interesting. I have to ask my mom, though I don’t think we’ve ever ridden a camel. I’m just the only reason I wonder if about riding a camel is, is it better on one humps or two? I don’t know.

Susan Reff: I cannot speak to this in any way. I would think the two humps would feel more stable.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: You’re sitting in the middle of the floor

Susan Reff: In between them? I don’t know.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So the other thing I was going to say about pet custody is, you know, it doesn’t come up all the time when we do divorces and a lot of people have pets, right? So they are able to have a discussion about what’s going to happen with the family dog or cat or whatever it is. And oftentimes, I think when we talk to our clients, like, Do you have a dog? What do you want to do with it? Sometimes people don’t want the dog and the dogs more work, but sometimes it has to do with Where are you going to live after, you know, during the during the pendency of the divorce? And if you have a big dog and you may, maybe you have to live in a rental property for a year. Sometimes people just physically can’t take the dog with them.

Susan Reff: Yeah. Or maybe they’re living with friends or family who really couldn’t have either another pet or there’s allergies. So those are things to think about. One of the things I think that helped potentially in the case that I was talking about before, like had we gone to trial the fact that the dog had been living with her the whole time, I think, is a little bit of would have helped her. And it wasn’t something that we did talk about in the beginning of the case. So she was smart and when when she moved out to take the dog with her to keep continuing to care for the dog. So I think, you know, people always ask us, Well, I’m going to move out of the house, should I take my kids or is that viewed as abandonment? And we all say, you know, no, not really anymore. That’s not a not

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Unless you leave your kids at home alone, right?

Susan Reff: Or you move to California and your kids are here. That’s probably not looked on to great from the judge, but if it’s if it’s a dog, I would. I would tend to probably advise someone. If you want the dog, take the dog with you. Yeah, because otherwise it’s it’s harder to get it back later.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Same with the camel.

Susan Reff: Yeah, I guess I’m using the word dog as

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Any pet, including a camel, but

Susan Reff: It seems it mostly mostly dogs are the thing now. Horses probably aren’t even at the house, right? So that’s a big thing.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I forgot what I was going to say, I was going to say something, really. Oh, OK. So the other situation is when and I remember the one case where pet custody was really important is there were two dogs. And so in my mind, also being a dog owner without kids. And this couple did not have kids, so the dogs were their children. In my mind, I was like, Well, easy, you each take one. That’s simple. That was not an option because apparently for both of these people, they both agreed that the dogs had to be together. And so it was really, truly it came down to that issue in a settlement. And I don’t even recall what happened and I should have. But that case ended abruptly. And so I think one person got both dogs, and it ended up coming down to one person owned one of the dogs before the marriage and during the marriage, they got the second dog. And so because they decided the dogs needed to be together. The other thing that I often think about too, is and I’ve told clients this when they have kids and a dog and they’re arguing over the dog and maybe the kids are, that’s already figured out they have a parenting plan that’s all solid. Sometimes I will advise a client go get the new puppy, right? Leave the old dog. Now I have an old dog, so I love the old dog. But leave the old dog with your spouse and then you get the fun new puppy and you can have the fun new puppy at your house. Sometimes I’ll advise a client of that.

Susan Reff: And then if that other person is like, well, they have to stay together, then the old dog eventually moves in with the new puppy.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: No, you get the new puppy after you separate. Oh, and so then it’s

Susan Reff: Get a new puppy.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yes. So then it’s like the kids are excited to be at your house because you have a puppy.

Susan Reff: Oh yeah, we see that a lot in divorces. Yeah. Now that you say that, like I do see a lot of people who especially if they’re the one to move out of the house, they get a dog, and maybe they didn’t even have a dog before. Right? So maybe divorces increase pet sales. I think a lot of people got pets in the pandemic, too. Yeah, that was a huge thing, especially dogs.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: We’re staying home a lot more. Yeah.

Susan Reff: So they wanted a dog. Or maybe a cat?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So you had a cat? Well, you have to, but you had one that was how old?

Susan Reff: Might well, we knew she was at least twenty two. She was a stray from the very beginning, and so she had been living with people for 22 years.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So twenty two plus, yeah, I shake my head in disbelief all the time, every time you say that

Susan Reff: I currently have a cat, that’s eighteen.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s amazing.

Susan Reff: I’m really good at longevity on Cat.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: This is why you’re getting my two cats if I die. Well, I can’t, and they’re not staying with my husband if I die first.

Susan Reff: My my 18 year old, I got as a kitten, so I can say that it’s due to my care that on him.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Wow. Yeah, so I have a 12 year old Great Dane, which is pretty good. Yeah, she’s starting to go downhill a little bit literally in her backside.

Susan Reff: Your dog as a Great Dane? Your dog is huge. But for a Great Dane, she’s actually small, right? Just like mini,

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, she’s only a hundred pounds.

Susan Reff: And how much is an

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Average Great Dane? I think an average female Great Dane is at least one hundred and twenty.

Susan Reff: There’s a Great Dane in my neighborhood that would make Maia look like Maya. Was this Great Danes baby?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So it’s probably a male male’s can are average ish. Two hundred pounds. She’s more like a camel

Susan Reff: Or another human lives in your house. Like, yes. Yeah. I can’t I’ve never had a dog. Never, ever, ever. My mom grew up breeding. Her family was they bred cocker spaniels and but we never had a dog. Like, That’s weird, right? Like, you would think she would have wanted a dog.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I might have listed my dog to you and my will to I can’t remember, but she’ll pass before I do, I think. So that’s good because you have no experience with dogs.

Susan Reff: Yeah, I don’t. I do not have any experience with dogs.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I think you’d figure it out.

Susan Reff: I do have a fenced yard, so that’s positive.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Didn’t your son have some animal in a cage recently?

Susan Reff: We have no caged animals at our house. We’ve thought about it, but like a guinea pig we’ve thought about, we’ve thought about. I’ve kind of wanted to get a rabbit. But and like litter box trained the rabbit and

Tracy Hightower-Henne: All of that, I’m crinkling my forehead.

Susan Reff: You can like care for a rabbit like a like a cat. And since we really like cats, we kind of thought, well, rabbits.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I suppose I crinkled my forehead at the litter box like another litter box. That’s the thing I hate about with my cats. Everything else I don’t mind.

Susan Reff: Yeah. So my niece, who’s my almost my same age, was very involved in rabbit rescues. Growing up and then when she got married and they had a house before they had kids, they had a rabbit room, so they always were rescuing rabbits and it was a bedroom in their house and they put up a baby gate. And it was the rabbits room. And it like literally was like hardwood floor, linoleum or something. And they had that like grassy stuff and they had like little bedding and they had a food area and they had so they would go in there and they I think they had litter boxes and they would clean it up. But like people buy rabbits at like Easter for their kids and they think they’re so great, but then they don’t know how to take care of them. Or they forget that pets are work.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Since you said rabbit rescue, I furrowed my brow.

Susan Reff: I’m sure they were really

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Cute, but she’s not picking up rabbits from the wild and bringing

Susan Reff: Them in. These are like, they’re like long haired rabbits. Some of them like show rabbits. My husband’s sister in law and brother, they used to live on an acreage. They did raise rabbits for show. Like for what? Like in the country, like 4-H, you know, like people would raise a cow or a goat so they would raise rabbits. So they had these long haired, really beautiful rabbits and then they would sell some of them or trade them, and then they would eat them.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh my God, I know they did. They do races or anything like jack rabbits.

Susan Reff: No, no. They’re like, pretty like there to look at like different coats and different,

Tracy Hightower-Henne: You know, never to go.

Susan Reff: Have you seen the chickens? I mean, different colors. Just the same thing.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I just saw a picture on Instagram of like all these pretty nice looking farm eggs from the chicken, and it was nice looking

Susan Reff: Bunnies don’t lay eggs. Did you know

Tracy Hightower-Henne: That? No. Well, I think and now that you said that, I know that, right?

Susan Reff: Yeah, chickens lay eggs.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So when they came out with the movie Marmaduke, is that the name Marmaduke? Yeah, the big. Apparently, everyone wanted to get a Great Dane, and they as puppies, the Great Danes are super cute, but like immediately they get to be one hundred plus pounds within, you know, a month. Yeah. And then everyone was having to get rid of the Great Dane because it got big.

Susan Reff: They say that happened after the 101 Dalmatians came out to everyone wanted a Dalmatian, and dalmatians have like temperament issues. They’re supposedly very nice dogs, right? And people with kids were getting them, and then they were biting or attacking kids. Yeah. So then there was probably a lot of them in rescues.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Legs. Oh, my husband hates when I asked if we got divorced, what would happen, but if you got divorced, what would happen with your cats?

Susan Reff: Um. It depends on why I was getting divorced, I mean, like so our old cat is definitely my husband’s like buddy, like they cuddle, they he he carries them around. He he’s always sleeps next to him. So since we have to, probably we would each take one.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, they don’t need to be together.

Susan Reff: They attack each other. Oh, I mean, they have that like love, hate cat relationship. Yeah. So I think they would be fine being separate. Great. So what’s your conversation with your husband?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, he definitely doesn’t want the cats. You might just get the cats if we get divorced. Neutral third party gets the yes, I’ll give you some money to take care of them. No, we love our cats. You know, they’re just it’s a cat thing. But I think our dog really is probably on her some of her last days. So we haven’t had that conversation because I don’t I don’t think we’re getting divorced before a dog dies, or maybe ever. But yeah, so she’s on our last days and. We’re just, you know, cuddling with her a little extra.

Susan Reff: Yeah, she gets to do stuff she wasn’t allowed to do before,

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So she used to have only like a pig year once, maybe once a week, if you know, we were like, Oh, she was really good. She gets like two pig ears a day now.

Susan Reff: Is that something that they eat? Yes, it’s kind of. It’s hard. Yeah, like a bone

Tracy Hightower-Henne: And a little bit. Yeah. She doesn’t have the biggest appetite, but we’re like, well, I guess if you eat to pig ears, that’s some food in you. So pig ears, that’s her thing. They have pig snouts. We’re getting way off topic. But these are the things, right? If you want the pet custody in your divorce, you’re going to have to think about, do you also want the cost of the pet? Yeah.

Susan Reff: So when we use the word custody, we’re really kind of using it loosely as not a legal term because there really is no law in Nebraska that says pets can be. Have you know, one person can have custody of a pet, right?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Ultimately, the decree would say you are awarded the pet right unless the two spouses want to make an agreement that they’re going to somehow share the time because you can share time with the couch, right? Or a toaster if you want to transfer the toaster back and forth with the kids. Right, you can do that. So just the same as a dog or a cat, I don’t think cats transfer very well from home to home, do they?

Susan Reff: Mine would not. None. Any cat I’ve ever owned would not. Yeah, not not a good thing. But like maybe some caged animals also would be able to go back and forth. Probably not a camel back and forth. If you were a camel, don’t you only probably like a trailer for your camel, too? And I don’t. Yeah, I don’t know.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: And all the goats and what else did we decide in a nativity scene?

Susan Reff: We, we we just said barnyard animals.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: We don’t know.

Susan Reff: I’m guessing you could probably put almost anything in a nativity scene and people would just look at the camel

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Like a monkey. They wonder why there’s a monkey there.

Susan Reff: You know, none of us were actually there. We don’t know, right?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: So so I think that things to remember as far as pets go in a divorce is there’s a lot of different situations that can be, you know, result in your in your decree with your pet. It’s whether maybe the two of you are going to agree what happens to the pet or you need to talk through it and negotiation. But it’s also it comes with those other aspects of who’s actually caring for the pet. It’s not just the pets, the fun, fun thing, right? Right. And a lot of it goes into, like you said, who takes care of the pet? Who’s the person that takes the pet to the vet? So if you are thinking about getting divorce, start taking care of your pet extra. Be the pooper picker upper.

Susan Reff: That was one thing when I was in that case, I was like, OK, how do I, you know, how do we talk about this? So you know who gives the dog a bath, who takes the dog on a walk, who makes sure the dog’s food is stocked up? You know, I mean, that’s what happens with me. It’s like the end of the night. It’s 10 30, and we have no cat food in the house. And I’m like, Oh, and then I

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Will eat your face off.

Susan Reff: I I don’t want that to happen or your garbage or other stuff that makes a mess. So I’m the one that drives out in the bad weather or the middle of the night and goes by more cat food. My husband, I don’t even think, would know what kind of cat food to buy.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Where do you buy cat food at 10 o’clock at night?

Susan Reff: Well, you know what I mean? Oh, or I get it the very next morning first thing. And yeah, and and the other thing to think about to kind of to go back to what you were saying is if if you are going to keep the pet and it’s a very valuable pet, there might be a dollar amount attached to it that you’re going to have to offset and equalize with the other person.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Right. Some dogs also can have a value, right? I mean, you might have a show dog. Sure.

Susan Reff: I mean, dogs, when people buy dogs from breeders, they’re pretty expensive, aren’t they?

Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. Have you heard about my mom’s cat breeding purchases?

Susan Reff: Yes, but I don’t. I guess we’ve never talked about the numbers, but your mom says that she buys the ones that they say they can’t sell for top dollar because they aren’t quite the right shape or form or coat color.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I don’t even know what kind Burmese are they Burmese, but they have the face smashed in like Garfield. So if it’s not smashed in and it doesn’t look like Garfield, then they’re not as expensive, but they’re still expensive anyway. So there’s a takeaway for you.

Susan Reff: They’re really small cats, too. And the ones she has, anyway, they are. They’re really cute.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: I think she’s been through like five of them from this breeder. She’s doing well,

Susan Reff: The breeders, like if I have one of these cats, I know who to call Debbie.

Tracy Hightower-Henne: All right, thank you for listening to the Lady Lawyer League podcast. Please like and subscribe anywhere you get your podcast and give us a five star review on Apple. If you want to know more about our firm, please visit our website at HR Law Omaha.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to the lady lawyer League Podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts, if you would like to learn about our firm, Hightower-Reff Law, visit us at HR Law Omaha.com. We’ll see you next week.