Stuck Together: Inside the Modern Divorce

Martha McCarthy, who has been practising family law for more than 15 years, says "You cannot agree to anything on a temporary basis that you wouldn't be willing to live with in the long term."

And so, she explains, for anyone who seeks some sort of serious child custody arrangement or desires sole custody of children, relinquishing any bit of ground in the household arrangement -- even temporarily -- is simply out of the question.

Grant Gold, another family law lawyer who has a surprising number of clients who continue to live together for increasingly long periods of time, says he tells those who say they cannot stand living in the matrimonial home that "what you lose by getting out is the ability to get back in in a hurry.… I don't want anybody leaving until there are arrangements in place for kids, for money; if you're the dad, I don't want you leaving until we have visitation nailed down."