If you're about to split up, is it possible to/allowed

[Carla]

To convert your garage into a bedsitting room for your partner? With access to the main house for all other necessary things? That way, I think, he'd get the benefits of seeing the children, and be 'really' close by. Or am I totally wrong? Do you have to provide something as 'nice' as he had before?

Um, well, depends if you are married, who the main earner is, and whether the person who it is proposed should live in the garage would go for it. But practically speaking would depend on planning permission/building regs. Don't need planning permission usually to convert an integral garage into living accommodation but if you are creating a separate dwelling the council may get interested. And it would cost thousands - minimum probably 10k for properly habitable room.

But would you really want your ex still living in your house? What about when you each meet new partners? What about when one of you wants to move in with a new partner?

Can't really see it working, tbh.

Thanks, edam.

Yes, we are married. He's 68, so probably won't be working for much longer. It's not an integral garage - does that make a huge difference?

And 10k would be nothing compared to what I'd have to buy him instead.

It would have to be on a 'you live here, I live there' situation, because the children would want to see him, and he'd want to see them. I'd have to make it apparent that his proximity still means they're separate dwellings. Or sort of. Christ, have you any experience of this sort of thing?