If you are going through a divorce and worried about what happens to your pet, Spanish law now treats that question seriously, and your pet is no longer just an object to be divided up like the furniture.
Until recently, Spanish law, particularly the Civil Code, treated animals as simple "things," lumped in with other property. That changed with Law 17/2021 of December 15th, which amended the Civil Code, the Mortgage Law, and the Civil Procedure Law. This law marked a real shift: it recognizes animals as living beings with feelings, while still allowing property rules to apply to them where that makes sense (for example, when it comes to ownership).
Why this changed
After a divorce involving children, custody and responsibilities have to be worked out, and shared property has to be divided. Increasingly, couples were also asking a similar question about their pets: who keeps the pet, and what rights does the other person have to see it? Courts were starting to see these questions too, which is part of why the law changed.
What the law requires now
Since Law 17/2021 took effect, every divorce must address who will care for the pet. This is written into the settlement agreement if the divorce is by mutual consent, or decided by the judge if the case is contested. The pet may be entrusted to one spouse or shared between both, and the agreement or ruling will set out how the other spouse can spend time with the pet, along with how the costs of caring for it are split. All of this is decided with the animal's wellbeing and the family's interests in mind, regardless of whose name the pet is registered under.
The law also introduced an important safety provision: mistreating animals, or threatening to, is now recognized as a form of controlling or victimizing a partner or children (sometimes called vicarious violence), and can be grounds for excluding someone from joint custody, the same way abuse toward a spouse or child already was.
