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Friday, June 7, 2013

Mom's House - Dad's House, After Divorce
A Canadian couple created a brilliant solution to a child custody problem most divorced parents face: carting the kids back and forth between mom's house and dad's house.
When physical child custody is split between divorced parents, Mom and Dad often find themselves hauling their children’s school, sports, and social equipment back and forth, and it's not uncommon to overlook something important, requiring yet another trip.
As reported by the Edmonton Journal, divorced parents Monica McGrath and Kent Kirkland designed a cleverly split family home that gives the parents their own private living space, along with a hall and door system that lets the kids stay in one house. This could work just as well for parents with California joint physical child custody.
The home is basically a duplex, with one half for each parent, but from the street, it looks like a single family residence. Monica's side has a front door at the front of the house, but the door and front porch to Kent's side is around the side of the house, hidden from the street view.
Although sharing a common wall, the insides of these twin homes are as different as the occupants. Monica's home is bright and light, with keepsakes decor and art. Kent's home is minimalist with neutral colors--stark and masculine with more practical features. What they have in common is three bedrooms on the second floor. But depending on which week it is, the number of bedrooms can increase to four, or decrease to two.
The children, 10-year-old Sean and 8-year-old Audrey, each have their own rooms, located in a hallway that is accessible to both homes, with locking fire doors at each end of the hall.
During the weeks when Monica has the kids, Kent locks the door on his end of the hall. When it's Kent's turn with the children, Monica locks her hallway door. The kids know not to try and access the other parent through the locked doors. They use the front door or the phone instead if they need their other parent.
What's so great about this arrangement is that the kids have permanent rooms, and don't have to haul their stuff back and forth between different homes. It also saves the parents a lot of driving to pick up kids. Another plus is the flexibility this allows in their lives. If an important outside commitment comes up during one of the parent's time with the kids, the other one is right next door.
Of course, it takes a certain amount of cooperation and civility between divorced parents, and the willingness to do what’s best for the kids, to be able to pull something like this off, along with the financial means to create such a flexible type of home. In Monica and Kent's case, they put their children first from the very start of the troubles in their marriage.
Monica and Kent admit that it was a lot of work to get where they are now, and they had to work through some hard feelings, and that even now all their feelings are not warm and loving. But they feel that it was worth it to be able to live in a ."progressive." home the children can call their own.
For more information on how parents can get the best possible California divorce for their kids, visit NoloDivorce.com/CA/CA.html.