Cost of living sees rise in separated parents sharing a house or 'birdnesting'

The cost of living combined with a desire to give kids stability sees some separated parents living at opposite ends of the same house. Others practise "birdnesting" which involves children staying put in the family house, while their parents move in and out on alternate weeks. Sarah Catherall talks to four couples about how they make it work.

Separated couple Michelle Guest and Ben Thurston share a 50/50 co-parenting roster while living under the same roof. Guest, a law student and communications specialist, talks from her upstairs bedroom while her childrens’ father is downstairs in his wing of the house. She has spent the evening cooking and eating dinner with their two children, Oscar, 13, and Tilly, 15, as it's her week to look after them. This week, Thurston, an electrician, is off parent duty. He’ll see the kids around the house but has no formal responsibility for them and, apart from cleaning his own bedroom and en suite, he doesn’t have to lift a finger.

The former couple who split two and a half years ago are not unusual. Bird nesting is a growing divorce trend where parents rotate in and out of the family home while the kids stay put – or in this version, the parents nest in the same house but live completely separate lives.

Although statistics are still hard to find, lawyers and relationship counsellors here and overseas agree that birdnesting is on the rise. Bridgette Jackson, founder of Equal Exes, an Auckland based coaching service for divorcing or separating couples, says many of her clients do some form of it. She points to the cost-of-living crisis and the property market leading creating a situation where many separating co-parents can’t afford to own or run two separate houses.

Back in Island Bay, Guest and Thurston talk about how to make it work: they have a property agreement which lists them as tenants in common, they have strict rules about introducing a new partner if they meet one, and the arrangement can be reviewed in four years, when their son is 16. There is also nothing chaining them to the house – they can live elsewhere on their off-week as long as they pay the mortgage.

“As long as we can keep the kids here, whatever we do outside of that is up to us,’’ says Guest.

When the couple first broke up, they sold their family home and Guest bought a small, 70sqm flat in Lyall Bay with two bedrooms, which was what she could afford. When the kids stayed, she slept in the lounge with their dog. Thurston stayed with friends and the kids went there on his week. “Everyone was miserable. The kids were living with me in this shitty little flat and they were going to Kelburn to stay with their dad [and his friends] on their other week,’’ says Guest.

Once time had healed the emotions of the initial split, Guest realised that they were good co-parents; it's their strength as a couple. She had thought about nesting together as soon as they separated because it made financial sense and would be better for the kids, but wasn't ready for it at that point. But last October, she and Thurston bought a new house together, saw a counsellor and lawyer, moved back in together, and everyone is happier. One of their rules is that no new partners are to be introduced until they’ve been around for six months and are likely to be long-term.

Thurston regularly heads out of town for work on his off-week, and he says: “The big driver for this arrangement was the kids. They were having a lot of angst going from place to place and having to think of where their stuff was and co-ordinating their lives. They were not subscribers to that method.’’

The family has a dinner together on Sundays to catch up on the upcoming week, and are planning a family trip to South-East Asia later in the year – taking the kids overseas jointly is the only way can afford to do it.

Joanna Davis and Warren Gamble are another former couple who initially lived separately but have moved back in together. The Nelson journalists and parents of a 15- and 17-year-old broke up six years ago and they’ve both written openly about their dating since then (Davis is now dating women).

After their split, Davis bought her own house, which the children spent week-about at, but she sold it this year and moved into a 10sqm sleep-out at Gamble’s -house in July.

They threw a moving-back-in-together-divorce party, where Davis raved about what a great guy her ex is (he's also stepdad to her 23-year-old daughter). Both work from home and meet every morning for coffee, while they do week-on/week-off parenting of the kids.

Says Davis: “It’s good for the kids to have us both around more as we’ve always had them 50/50. With the ages they are, I'm aware now that they won't be home forever, so it's lovely to spend time with them. Our kids have definitely benefited from us liking each other post-separation.’’

In Auckland, Alice Russell* and Simon Mabey* are also nesting while they wait for their house to sell. For now, they co-parent their teenage children aged 13 and 15 in the family home, where they have lived for two decades. They broke up in April – his decision – and in the early days, paid for an Airbnb and took turns rotating between that and the family home.

Mabey says they initially needed space from one another, but the Airbnb became expensive, so he moved back into the family home and took over the spare bedroom.

Russell says: “The cost of living was definitely a factor in our decision to live this way.’’

They’re now comfortable with the break-up, and with sharing the house with separate bedrooms. They’re each in charge of the kids for two weeknights and then they alternate weekends – on their weekends "off" they're free to stay in the house or go away for a break.

Russell thinks it works well: they live separate lives but can catch up about their children and also have a regular family dinner. “It has given the kids time to get used to us not being together, to process the change."

But she admits, "It makes it harder to move on while you’re living under one roof."

Mabey likes it because he misses his children when he's away from them. For that reason when he's expecting to feel another wrench when he and Russell eventually sell their house and live apart.

In Nelson, Louise Simpson* and James Michael* kept the family home when they split two and a half years ago, and they now move in and out of it on alternate Mondays, taking turns to parent their kids on a weekly basis. When they mutually ended their marriage, they were willing to give up their relationship and become co-parents, but they didn’t want to sell the family home they'd enjoyed together.

Simpson says: “I loved our house and we had both worked hard for it. We also couldn’t deal with the immediate division of our property and we thought: why should the kids do the admin of dealing with their parents’ break-up? The kids had lived in the same house all their lives and we were keen not to disrupt them too much.’’

Both Simpson and Michael have re-partnered since their break-up, and they stay with their new partners on the weeks they’re off parenting duty. “The key to this is that we don’t discuss our new relationship and we try to keep that separate from the house and the kids.’’

They have some rules: they each took a different bedroom and they leave the house tidy when they leave. Simpson says part of the motivation was financial because they would clear about $400,000 each if their house was sold, “which won’t get us far if either of us want to buy a new place...

“A lot of people think we’re really bizarre,’’ she laughs. “It’s probably not for everyone. But I get a nice week to myself and I don’t have to try to integrate my kids with my new partner and the kids stay put.’’

Experts working with separated parents are divided on whether nesting is healthy and for how long; critics fear the nest might eventually unravel.

Bridgette Jackson has guides for her clients: children should always come first, there should be agreed rules around new partners, and ideally it’s only a short-term arrangement. Nesting only works in amicable break-ups, not the high-conflict divorce cases she often aids.

Wellington-based divorce coach Kelly Sutton says many of her clients are also nesting or nest at some stage, and the arrangement can work if boundaries are put in place, giving parents and children time to adjust to the new separation.

Nurit Zubrey, an Auckland-based family mediator, likes the fact that birdnesting enables kids to stay put, and says: “Parents don’t always appreciate how hard it is for their children when they are forever living out of bags, wandering between two houses every few days.

“In my mediations, whenever we get a child-specialist to interview the children and bring their voices into the mediation, the kids often talk about these difficulties, about moving between houses every couple of days, about forgetting to take an important item from house to house and how the parents get angry at them for it.

“Why should the children pay the price for their parents’ decisions and suffer the discomfort? Adults are much more resilient than children and can handle change better. Children need stability and continuity and sentencing them to constantly moving is tough and often unjust.’’

*Names changed have been changed.

Sarah Catherall is the author of How to Break Up Well: Surviving and Thriving After Separation (Bateman Books).