This is information, not legal advice. Petipedia is not a law firm and cannot tell you what to do about your own situation. Everything below names the body that published it so you can read the original. Where something depends on which state you are in, it says so, and you will need to check your own state or talk to a lawyer there.
Sources read on 16 September 2026.
In every state, a pet is personal property. Not a person, not a category of its own. Almost everything else on this page follows from that one sentence, and most of it comes as a surprise.
Because the animal is property, the usual measure of compensation is what it was worth, not what it meant to you. For most pets that number is small, and for a mixed-breed rescue it can be close to nothing. The Texas Supreme Court put the general position plainly in 2013, saying recovery is limited to loss of value rather than loss of relationship, and that this matches what it called the overwhelming majority of states.
Some states have moved. Tennessee passed a statute allowing up to five thousand dollars for the loss of a pet’s companionship, though it does not apply to veterinarians acting professionally. A handful of other states have reached further through their courts, usually only where the harm was deliberate rather than careless. This is genuinely a patchwork rather than a trend that has arrived.
This one costs people their pets. A microchip registry is a contact database. Whoever has the animal can generally put their own name on the record, and nobody checks whether they have any right to it. So the chip shows who says they are the contact, not who owns the animal.
In a dispute a court weighs it as one piece of evidence among many: adoption paperwork, a purchase receipt, vet records, a license, photographs, who has been paying the bills, and how long each person has had the animal. The American Bar Association set this out in 2025.
None of which is a reason not to chip your pet. It is the single most useful thing for actually getting an animal back. It is a reason to keep the registry details current and to keep your adoption or purchase paperwork somewhere you can find it.
Check that your microchip registration has your current phone number on it. A chip registered to a disconnected number is the commonest reason a found pet is not returned.
Keep the adoption contract or purchase receipt. It is the strongest single document if ownership is ever questioned.
If something has happened and you are considering a claim, a lawyer in your own state is the only way to know what you can actually recover there.