Co-parenting is the most popular variety of custody situation after a divorce. This is because children do best with both parents involved in their lives, even if those parents are no longer married.
However, co-parenting can produce a lot of stressful situations. One of these situations is shuttling the kids back and forth between two residences. Instead of this, some families have opted for a nesting situation. According to Psychology Today, nesting is when the children stay in one home and both parents rotate in and out according to the custody arrangement.
What are the benefits to this?
One of the major benefits of nesting is that it involves very little disruption to the child’s life. The child gets to stay in the same room, home, school district, and continue on with any normal extracurricular activities. Particularly if the parents live in a high cost of living area, nesting may allow the parents to keep the living situation stable for children.
Nesting can potentially save money, particularly if the parents can live rent-free with family and friends when they are not “on parent duty” and in the house.
How long do nesting arrangements last?
Generally speaking, nesting arrangements tend to be temporary. Usually, one or both parents will want to set up their own independent living situations at some point. However, nesting is a good stop-gap measure while the parents are managing their own finances and going through the divorce process. Nesting is good for parents who want to provide their children with as stable of a home environment as possible while the parents work out other details of the divorce and future living arrangements.
