One term you may have heard in relation to child custody is bird nesting. This is a custody strategy that is rarely used, but one that can be very useful for specific couples.
It is often used in situations where the parents believe it will make life easier for the children. If your goal is to provide them with stability and to make sure their lives don’t change too much, bird nesting may be one way to do it.
Choosing a house to be the nest
Essentially, bird nesting starts by determining where the children are going to live. If you and your spouse already own a home, you’re probably just going to pick the same home the children already live in now. This becomes the nest, and they live there all of the time.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t split custody, however. You do divide your time, just as you would otherwise. But the traditional model calls for the children to move back and forth between homes based on the schedule. With bird nesting, it is the parents who move back and forth, with one parent moving out and the other moving in.
This does mean that the parents have to have a second home, a place where they can live when they don’t have custody of the children. Some couples decide to have two residences that they switch back and forth, while others decide that each person is going to have their own secondary residence.
Is this right for you?
You can see that the children may enjoy bird nesting because of the stability that it provides and the fact that they don’t have to leave the home they are used to. If you’re interested in this or any other custody options, carefully consider what legal steps you should take.