As you go through divorce mediation with your spouse, the two of you may be considering your child custody options. If you want to share custody, you may assume that means your children will live with your spouse part of the time and then move to your house when you have custody.
The exact division of days can vary from case to case, such as a child living with their mother during the week and their father on the weekends, or both parents trading the responsibility every other week.
An alternative to consider, however, is birdnesting. If you and your spouse already own a family home where the children live and feel comfortable, you can allow them to stay in that home 100% of the time. When you set up your custody arrangement, it just tells you when you live in the house with the children and when you need to move out and live elsewhere so that your ex can take over.
What are the main hurdles?
It may be good to consider this if you’re going through divorce mediation because that means you and your spouse are willing to work together. Perhaps the divorce is fairly amicable. Birdnesting requires the two of you to share the home and many of the responsibilities, and you’ll interact with each other a lot. So it doesn’t always work for high-conflict divorce cases, but it may work for a couple that is doing mediation.
The second hurdle is that it can be expensive. You’ll have to budget and determine if you can afford to keep the home for the children, along with separate living spaces for yourselves.
No matter what you decide to do, your child custody rights are very important, so be sure you know what legal steps to take during the divorce.
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