Athina Onassis, the only surviving descendant of Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and her Brazilian ex-husband, Alvaro “Doda” de Miranda Neto, are disputing ownership of their horse, Cornetto K, in the courts 

Solicitor Alice Couriel can count 19 out of 300 divorces her firm has been involved in over the past year where the warring couples found themselves at loggerheads over an immovable point of contention: who gets custody of the horse?

One recent case involved an – unnamed – professional couple whose lengthy marriage ended in a dispute about whether a husband would pay for the stabling and paddock which his ex-wife demanded for her beloved steed. Another involved a jilted wife who insisted her husband buy a replacement for her ageing horse in order to allow her to continue riding after their divorce as part of the agreed settlement.

What happens to the horse is now a “critical element” of middle-class divorces. Along with private school fees and who gets to keep the second home in France, deciding who stumps up the cash to keep Shergar II well-shod is increasingly making hay for lawyers up and down the land.

“Such cases tend to fall into one of a few categories,” says Alice Couriel, who works for the legal firm Hall Brown Family Law. “There are those with sufficient joint wealth for the cost of keeping even valuable horses not to be a real issue of contention, and those in which ownership is a very sentimental thing. There are others still, however, in which discussions about future finances are so closely contested that the amounts needed to care for any kind of horse can be a problem.”

There remains a strong gender bias in equine circles, with women representing 74 per cent of the riding population. (The most recent survey by the British Equine Association in 2015 estimated there were 446,000 horse-owning households in the country.) This, says Couriel, is where the “real tension” can arise when marriages come to an end.

“Husbands often contest wives’ insistence that keeping and providing for horses is a need which must be taken into account when it comes to determining where she might live and the size of potential settlements after they divorce,” she says. “They contend that they are luxuries instead.”

According to Couriel, three-quarters of divorce disputes which centre around a horse involve childless couples. Some wives, she says, come to regard their horses almost as “surrogate children”.

Understandably, warring couples tend to wish to leave their names out of any divorce arrangements in the courts. One landmark case in 2008 involved an unidentified couple from Gloucestershire known only as “S V S” who had lost a child during pregnancy and opted to keep horses instead.

Eventually the wife was awarded a £1.5m divorce package by the appeal judges, including a £900,000 lump sum from her investment banker husband plus an overall maintenance package of £80,000 a year, which included £50,000 a year in maintenance for her horses.

In a different case from 2008, Tracey Wright had a similarly generous settlement agreed by the courts following her split from Ian Wright, 59, a millionaire horse surgeon.

The original divorce settlement gave Mrs Wright a £450,000 mortgage-free house in the heart of riding country, in Newmarket, Suffolk, plus stabling for her horse and her daughters’ ponies.

But in 2015, an Appeal judge ordered that the maintenance payments for the 52-year-old mother-of-two should cease and that she should be required to go out and get a job.

Other high profile cases involving horses have rumbled through the divorce courts this year.

In January, a settlement was announced between the Hollywood stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard ending their relationship of two years.

Heard walked away with the family horse, Arrow, plus two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, and $7m (which she immediately pledged to donate to charity). Depp retained sole possession of properties in Los Angeles, Paris and his private island in the Bahamas, as well as a collection of more than 40 vehicles and vessels, including vintage cars and motorcycles.

Meanwhile, Athina Onassis (the only surviving descendant of Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis) and her Brazilian ex-husband, Alvaro “Doda” de Miranda Neto – who are both keen riders – continue to dispute ownership of their horse, Cornetto K, in the courts.

The law in England and Wales regards pets as “chattels”, something to be divided up in the same manner as the dining room table or record player. This lack of legal clarity means pet custody battles in general are becoming an increasingly rancorous part of divorces.

Lesley Cooper, who runs Trallwm Farm animal sanctuary in South Wales, says she has been previously contacted by concerned horse owners terrified that their partner is going to try and take their beloved animal out of spite in the divorce settlement.

“We have had people ask us to hide horses and cases where malicious former partners have asked us to take horses,” she says.

Three-quarters of divorce disputes centred around a horse involve childless couples. Some wives come to regard their horses almost as surrogate children

In 2013, Trafford-based law firm Slater Heelis announced the formation of a new arbitration service to help warring couples act in their pet’s best interests and assist with the seemingly innocuous decision of who should end up with any animal as part of the divorce settlement.

Debbie Connolly, a Midlands-based pet behaviourist, offers a similar service helping separating couples decide on custody of their animals. “For most animal lovers it is as important as dealing with children,” she says. “They generally do form a very strong emotional bond.”

Connolly can recall two cases in recent years which have involved a horse.

“One of them was this ridiculous situation where both sides obviously thought they had the best home to offer,” she says. “Whoever the person is the principal remains the same: the person who thinks they love the horse the most isn’t necessarily the best home for it.”

Connolly says the most recent horse dispute she was involved in became “quite acrimonious” with the husband threatening the wife he was going to insist upon taking her beloved horse with him.

“My feeling was the husband was using her horse against her,” she says. “I was convinced he was going to punish her. He kept it going right until the point where they sold the house and just as he was talking about finding livery it just never happened.”

According to Connolly, being separated from a pet can prove equally painful to walking away from a child.

And wherever there is a soft spot, some spurned partners cannot resist jabbing the spur in as they make their escape.