Were divorced and birdnesting its the only way to protect our children

Who says you can’t have your nest and leave it too?A divorced couple in Washington state is going viral for their unconventional — and surprisingly harmonious — custody arrangement known as “birdnesting.”Devin Justine and Brendan Cleary, both 33, decided to end their eight-year marriage when Justine was six months pregnant with their second child. Despite the heartbreak, they agreed on one thing: the kids should come first.“I came to Brendan and I said, ‘I hate you right now, but we need to put our heads together and think outside of the box on how we’re going to make this work for our kids,’” Justine told Today.com.Cleary was “100% on board.”Their solution? Let the kids stay put in the family home while the parents rotate in and out — much like birds returning to the nest. When Cleary, a firefighter, is on duty or off-nest, he sleeps at the station.

Justine stays with her parents nearby. They’re currently building a garage apartment so they can continue taking turns on the same property — no suitcases or back-and-forth shuffling for the kids.“I’m a product of divorce.I spent my life living out of a suitcase, and there was no way we could ask our kids to do the same,” said Justine.

“Kids want to sleep in the same bed every night.”The nesting approach may not be new, but it’s gaining traction among co-parents looking to limit the emotional whiplash for kids post-divorce.“There’s little disruption for the kids.They’re not being affected [environmentally] by the fact that their parents are separating,” Sherri Sharma, a partner at Aronson, Mayefsky & Sloan, LLP, a Manhattan matrimonial law firm, told NBC News. She noted that many nesting parents share a small off-site apartment to swap between stints in the marital home.

But this isn’t a forever fix, the pro warned.“I’ve never seen ‘nesting’ go on forever,” Sharma said.“A few months is okay but for longer periods (beyond six months), I think the...