Moving in with my boyfriend, my best friend and her baby

[Rosehipsandlavender]

Myself and my boyfriend are in our early twenties, living together in a little studio flat. We are looking to move out within the next month or so. My best friend is pregnant, due in the next couple of months. She is in a bit of a complex situation with living arrangements etc. We were thinking of renting a 2 bed flat together, as this would solve her problems and would also mean we could all live in a much nicer place for cheaper.
Has anyone got any advice or even had the same sort of set up?

Who will be on the tenancy? What happens when she meets someone new or decides the baby needs its own room? If you do this, please ensure you have an easy ge5 out and expectations are crystal clear re childcare.

NC because this is obviously very outing!
DH and I tried something similar to this with a (at the time) friend - except that we bought the house together on a 3-way mortgage.
At the time that we were viewing properties, I was newly pregnant with DC1, which our friend obviously knew about and said he was happy with.
DS was born about a month after we all moved in together.
It became almost immediately awful. DH and I were now a family unit with DS, but our friend wanted to continue living as a 3-young-people houseshare - staying up drinking together and spending weekends together etc. I think he had envisioned that we would all live together as a (slightly weird) happy family, but in reality, in the throes of new, sleep deprived parenthood, we just didn't have the time to spend with him.
Learning to breastfeed around him was difficult and awkward - for me, and probably for him.
He had to live with being woken in the night by DS crying etc, and as DS became mobile it was really difficult for our housemate to get to grips with keeping the place safe (not leaving his vape lying around, keeping the child locks on the cupboard doors etc), and he didn't see DS's safety as his responsibility.
Also, completely aside from the issue of a new baby in the mix, it turned out we had completely different values and priorities. I was on maternity leave and not earning, so we wanted to be somewhat frugal, but he's from a well-off background and wanted to buy the best, most expensive version of anything we bought for the house. That was one of many differences in values.
As the only resident female, I became the default person for doing all of the housework and typically "female" tasks and emotional labour, exacerbated by him having ADHD and needing a lot of support with executive function - which I just didn't have the bandwidth for as a new mum. I imagine it would be very easy for your DP also to get pushed into a similar quasi-partner role for your friend.
There were other issues too - if he and I were ever alone together he would sometimes really push the conversation to become sexual, not because he fancied me but just as some kind of weird power thing. And he had some really distasteful opinions about young girls, the age of consent etc, which made me really anxious about having a DC in the same house as him. I never left him and DS alone together, never changed DS's nappy in front of him, etc
But even without those issues I think it would have gone wrong. New parenthood is such an all-consuming, transformative time and I think we all underestimated how much it would change me and DH.
As soon as our 2-years was up on the mortgage we put the house on the market. By that point we were all still living in the same house, but only communicating through our solicitors. It was honestly the worst experience of my life.
The only benefit was that it got us onto the property ladder which we probably couldn't have done otherwise, and now we have a lovely home and 2DC, and are very happy. I see it as something awful we went through in order to give the DC a better life, but it was genuinely traumatic and I would not recommend it to anyone.

we aren’t paying for her rent!!!!!

I understand it that UC would see this as your friend has a room share and will only cover her percentage of the rent, so if the rent is £900PM she will pay £450pm. But she would need paperwork to say this.
If you all go on the tenancy, you are all liable if the others can't pay. So you'd need to consider how this works with risk to pay and with her benefits. Because if she receives benefits to cover the whole rent, and isn't paying it it's not been done right.
You and your partner would take the tenancy then become her landlord effectively. A lot of private landlords don't allow this as it's called subletting.

Aside from the legal/moral/practical side of things, something I'd suggest considering for you/your partner is babies don't stay babies for long. Once baby is on the move everything needs to be child proof, they won't be just in the bedroom the main area will be living room, so your drinks can't be left on the floor, doors need to be kept shut, stair gates, no leaving coins from pockets around, wrappers, bin always needs the lid on etc. The child will be in there in the daytime so not midday hangovers watching films out there.
Basically it won't be your child but you will need to be responsible for it's safety with your own tidiness and cleaniness, as well as working together with your friend to live together comfortably.

All in all I think this is actually a good idea, but it hugely depends on your lifestyle, your friendship and you all setting really clear boundaries from the offset.

This isn't about adults sharing this will include a single first time Mother and a newborn baby. A lot of people on MN have had children and don't even want family popping in after giving birth due to how stressful it is and how terrible you feel, lack of sleep, worrying about everything and the stuff, all the baby stuff. It spills out everywhere into every room. The baby will disturb the couple's sleep and the Mother of the baby will not want her baby woken with noise or her own sleep disturbed by normal household noise.

Yes, in an ideal world this could work out but the odds are massively stacked against it working. The couple going out for the evening together, the friend staying home with the baby. Resentment could build over the simplest of things.

Ds1 was rushed back into hospital at 1 week old with a suspected serious medical condition. It was weeks of appointments and tests and worry. Ds2 was an incredibly poorly baby, different condition, was under a paediatrician, did not feed normally nor sleep normally until over a year old. The idea of adding a couple sharing our house with all that going on? No thank you, it would have destroyed the friendship.

A 3 bed house maybe..it's not going to work on a flat.

I don’t see this working as you’ll need 2 contracts for the flat. Or will she be paying the rent for all of it? Or rather the council pay it . She needs her own private place for her and her baby.

Why would it? If she's on the tenancy she can claim benefits towards her rent. It's likely her rent would be unaffordable in a one bedroom flat on her own as the amount is capped, and a house share will be cheaper.

It will not work in a flat. There will simply not be enough room for you all to have your own space and time apart. If you can do it with seperate living areas maybe.

the problem is, you have no idea what kind of baby she will have. If she’s walking the floors between midnight and 4 every single night as the baby screams, this will not make for a good living situation for any of you.

Not really. Living with a new born even when it's part of your family isn't always easy.

Will OP and bf be happy with the strong likelihood of getting roped in to being unofficial child minders and their lives disrupted. Parents are at a different stage of life to new couples especially within a home eg keeping noise to a minimum or the opposite of having a teething baby.

Good luck finding a landlord that will accept rent being paid by UC, and a baby in the flat.

No, don’t do it. A newborn is a lot of work and will take over the place, it’s not a living situation for a young couple to be in.

Plus the baby will need its own room in 6 months - she needs a 2 bed place to herself. You and your partner need your own space.

Are you reading the same thread as everyone else?

OP isnt paying her rent

What do you mean 'is this legal and above board' ? Do you think there are laws against people living together?

Absolute madness.

Having a shared tenancy agreement is very straightforward

Babies don't need their own bedrooms at 6 months! What are you talking about? Putting a baby in a separate room might be desirable for some parents but it's by no means necessary!

I think you are completely underestimating the level of upheaval that a baby brings to a household. It is a nice thing to think of doing, but you really shouldn't.

I think we all still think you’ve clearly lost your mind if you think this living arrangement is a good idea. 🤯

i am wondering if are you massively underestimating what living with a baby is like? aside from the night waking, bottles being made at 3 am, washing machine on constantly, the clutter they come with. They grow up quickly, they get into everything and it will ideally need its own room within a year. Also I'd be concerned with 'can you just watch it while I...' becoming a regular request I'm not saying she would intentionally be a cf but its easy to fall into when someone else is there. It's a nice idea but practically I think it could lead to strained relationships all round.

Youve lost your mind! You clearly dont know how much sleep your going to loose.

we aren’t paying for her rent!!!!!

there will be a independent deduction off her benefits, you will be expected to cover the rent she looses from it.

This is exactly how I would imagine it (not) working out.

OP read this cautionary tale.

I can imagine it could work but you would have to be a very particular kind of person who actively wanted to embrace being part of an extended family to the baby.

If you think that you can both continue your lives without having to significantly compromise for each other you would be very mistaken.

Doing it to get a “better” flat is just not the right reason.

Conversely if they don’t do anything to help, can you imagine how tough that would feel to a single mum trying to do everything on her own while living with couple living the carefree life? It’s a recipe for resentment either way.

Yep!

Twos company, threes a crowd.

If there’s a dispute, who will you side with, bf or best friend?

Babies are also very disruptive.