7 things you must know about birdnesting

‘And they lived happily ever after’ doesn’t always have to mean they lived happily together. In the 2022/2023 financial year, data held by the Department for Work and Pensions revealed there were 2.4 million separated families in Great Britain, and 3.8 million children living in separated families.

Fast forward to 2025 and the latest family court statistics showed there were 26,412 divorce applications made between April to June 2025 under the ‘no fault divorce’ legislation. In our line of work, we often help families where the parents have decided to separate and move on, and there is one trend that is increasingly being spoken about – birdnesting.

Here are 7 things you should know about birdnesting if you have a young family and decide to separate:

1. The term birdnesting takes its cues from, literally, a bird’s nest. In its human form, the children stay in the family home – the nest – while each parent takes turns to come into the nest to parent.

2. Birdnesting is a style of co-parenting that can prove beneficial in the early days of a separation. There is stability for the children as all of their clothes and toys stay in one place, which eliminates the need to pack up and move between two houses. There’s also continuity in terms of hobbies, friends and local support networks. 

3. Birdnesting can appeal to budget-conscious parents who are separating. Instead of having the expense of running two homes big enough to accommodate their children, each co-parent can find a smaller property to live in while not in the nest. This could be an apartment they rent or buy. Some co-parents even choose to secure just one additional property that they take turns staying in but this can come with its own complications.

4. If the family home is owned by both parents and one, or both of them, choose to buy another home to live in, they will be making an additional purchase. Not only will there be a higher rate of stamp duty applied, there will also be capital gains tax to pay on any profit made when one of the homes is sold. 

5. Co-parents will need to set a schedule of who stays in the property and when. This may not be an equal 50-50 split. As such, consideration needs to be given to how bills, insurance premiums, repairs and mortgage repayments are split.

6. On the latter point, if the mortgage repayments are not split equally moving forwards, legal advice should be taken. It may be possible that the family nest is best held as a tenancy in common instead of a joint tenancy moving forwards.

7. Birdnesting may not last forever. Some children find the practice of parents ‘flying’ in and out unsettling or misleading, with a clean break and two distinct family homes the best long-term option. Birdnesting also commonly ends when a family home needs to be sold as part of a divorce settlement, or if a parent's new relationship isn’t compatible with the birdnesting arrangement.

The break-up of a family can be an emotionally fraught time but it’s our job to make the property aspect as simple as possible. Contact us if you need to find a smaller pad for when you’re not in the nest, or if you need a valuation of your family home.