Reconcilable Differences

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For six years after therapist Tera Abelson and cameraman Mark Wotton separated in 1992, they worked out creative doublenesting arrangements to enable both to continue living with their children. First, Tera moved into a tent in the backyard of their Massachusetts home. Later, she moved inside, and Mark slept in an enclosed porch. In 1995, after relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, they were able to afford a large house in which they had bedrooms on separate floors. Initially, the children--Zoe, then 3, and Noa, 4--were oblivious to the separation. "The fact that Mark and I were parenting partners hadn't changed," says Tera. Concurs Mark: "They only knew that they were loved and respected." Eventually, about the time Tera and Mark began dating other people, they explained to the children that they were no longer a couple. Were the kids wistful for their parents to reunite? Not at all. They liked their parents' new partners.

Two and a half years ago, Tera moved in with her boyfriend David to make room in the house for Mark's new wife Erin and her son from an earlier marriage, Tyler. Now Noa and Zoe must commute between homes once a week. But the entire family--including the newest members--continues to get together for holidays and occasional meals. "The conventional view is that divorce is the disintegration of family," says Mark. "For us, it was an expansion of family, an opportunity to renew and change." The kids, who thrived in one house, seem equally happy in two. Do they fantasize that their parents will reunite? Both children are puzzled by the notion. Says Noa: "If my parents got back together, where would Tyler, Erin and David go?"

Though some couples share housing as a transition to divorce, others come to it later, after some of the inevitable ill feeling has dissipated. Relations between Mary Kaye and Pat Perotti were frosty when they divorced in 1992. The three kids, then ages 8 through 15, lived with their mother in Marietta, Ga., during the week. Their dad would pick them up Friday night, drive them to his home 175 miles away in Greenville, S.C., then return them to their mother Sunday night. The two round trips, 700 miles a weekend, were exhausting--and wore out four cars in seven years. Then Mary Kaye offered to let Pat stay in her home when he wanted to see the children. Now when Pat comes, one of the two daughters sleeps with Mary Kaye, and he sleeps in the daughter's vacated room. Outsiders find the arrangement odd--"Everyone thinks there's some kind of hanky-panky; there isn't," says Pat. But the Perottis are comfortable with it.

Some unconventional arrangements initiated to benefit the kids continue because they suit the adults. When San Francisco Chronicle columnist Adair Lara separated from her husband, publisher Jim Heig, in 1985, she moved into a succession of nearby rentals. Though she always managed to find a place within a couple miles of Jim's house, that distance seemed to grow longer and more inconvenient as they chauffeured the kids--Morgan, then 6, and Patrick, 5--to and fro every 3 1/2 days. When Adair got married six years later, to cookbook editor Bill LeBlond, the newlyweds began looking for a home to buy but found nothing they could afford in the city. Morgan was showing signs of what was to become a turbulent adolescence (documented in Adair's book Hold Me Close, Let Me Go), and the adults felt they needed to be nearer rather than farther apart. So Bill and Adair had little trouble persuading Jim to sell them the downstairs apartment he had previously rented out. "It immediately made things better for the kids," says Adair. She and Jim were able to coordinate strategies for dealing with Morgan and relieve each other when the strain grew excessive. "I would just say, 'I can't handle this. You have to go to your dad's.' So there was an immediate safe place for her to go. Jim and I were very supportive of each other."