The Court of First Instance number 7 of Pamplona has issued a surprising resolution regarding the custody of a dog, choosing to grant this custody exclusively to its owner in order to avoid “future problems” between her and her ex-boyfriend. The ruling also states that shared custody could also have harmful consequences for the animal itself.
The sentence, which has been echoed by Diario de Noticias de Navarra, has to do with the situation of a dog, born in July 2019 and adopted two months later, once the owners who took him in decided to separate, in October 2021, two years after adopting him.
Once this young couple, residing in the Pamplona conurbation, ended their relationship, custody of the dog became a cause of dispute. The pet stayed with her owner after the breakup was completed, since she was the administrative owner of the animal and had always lived in her home, along with the woman's parents.
However, after some time, the man requested custody or shared possession of the animal in court, since, according to his complaint, a point had reached where the woman did not allow him to visit the dog. This is where the litigation began. Rafael Ruiz de la Cuesta, the judge who was in charge of the case, has agreed with the woman, since in his opinion shared custody would not benefit the couple in any way.
"Once the relationship is broken, it is estimated that it would be of no benefit to both members of the former couple to maintain any type of bond. The disaffection between them is understood to be total at this time. They are very young and each one has to project (or follow projecting his own life into the future regardless of the other," states the sentence, published by Diario de Noticias.
In this sense, the judge points out that maintaining “a bond” for the next few years “would end up being a source of future problems,” alluding to the fact that some unpleasant episodes had already occurred between these people.
The magistrate also puts three other arguments on the table. According to him, by the time the couple sent a burofax stating that he wanted to share custody of the animal, more than a year had already passed during which he did not see the animal regularly. “By then a situation was consolidated in which the relationship focused and focused on the ex-girlfriend,” he says.
Likewise, the judge indicates that initiating shared custody and resuming “the bond” between the former couple would be detrimental to the animal itself.
Finally, the sentence highlights that the former owner of the animal has acquired a new pet, something that would have served to “ease the emptiness and pain” of not seeing his old pet.
