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Charming Nemesis wrote:

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That could be a good setup, but no way in hell is Kategoddess giving up that house for any period of time.

*looksoutwindow* "All this is mine!"

Zashin has had cases where the kids stay in one house and the parents take turns living there, one week at a time. "That's a kid-centered approach," he comments, but every case is different.

In my recent post about child custody, I explained the main types of child custody. One of the more rare child custody arrangements, is what is referred to as 'bird's nest' custody.

In this unique situation instead of the children switching between mom's house and dad's house on a set schedule, it is the parents who rotate in and out of the house, while the children stay in one centralized location, one home.

It seems that very few parents are able to keep their relationship civil enough after a divorce, or demise of a live in relationship, to keep this kind of arrangement going, yet there are a few families who are able to pull it off. I knew of a family who had accomplished this arrangement, raising happy, healthy, and well-adjusted children. After realizing that they could no longer live together and have the household be a healthy environment for the children, the parents decided to divorce. But instead of taking the route most often traveled and bitterly fighting over every last detail of their marriage and life together, including the children, they made the tough decision to work together and put their children first.

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They rented an apartment, and each parent took turns residing in the family home with the children, while the other stayed in the apartment. Neither parent brought a new love interest to the family home, saving any personal relationship time for their time spent in the apartment away from the children. While this particular family was able to share one apartment between the two parents, it is more common in this type of custody situation for each parent to have a separate place of their own, outside of the family home.

This may be one of the reasons that this type of custody situation is so much less common than others, running the family home, a small home for mom, as well as a small home for dad is bound to put a dent in even the thickest of wallets! Bird's nest custody situations are also going to run into trouble if either or both parents remarry. Toting a new spouse, or blended family from house to house every week or month is only going to fly for so long before one side or the other can no longer deal with the arrangement. Many stepparents have a hard time dealing with their spouse's ex during drop offs and pick ups, few would tolerate sharing a common house with him or her.

The family that I mentioned earlier thought of this, and both vowed to wait until all of their children were out of the house, since they were all teenagers at the time of the divorce, before seriously dating or remarrying. Once their children were out of the family home, the house was sold, the equity was split, and the parents went their separate ways moving on with their lives, yet still remaining amiable towards each other.

While this is a custody situation that is formulated around giving the children the most stable home life possible in a divorce situation, there are few families out there with the necessary financial and emotional resources and stability to make it a reality for their family.