Co-habitation

To help yourself, you must be yourself. Be the best that you can be. When you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up and move on.

Dave Pelzer

Cohabitation is the term used to when you are living with a relationship partner you're not married to.

It becomes an issue in terms of things like child support and parenting payments from Centrelink.

For example, with child support, if you're getting any financial assistance from this person, you may need to report it.

If you are on a single parent pension you may have to report your change of circumstances to avoid a Centrelink debt. 

You should be aware that's an issue, but on the other hand, legally, you can live with whoever you choose to live with.

One of the areas that tends to increase conflict with a high-conflict co-parent is if you're lying about that. If you say, “No, I'm not living with somebody” and you are, that's going to create more difficulties.

In general, you're better off not lying about anything to your co-parent, but also maintaining appropriate boundaries and not volunteering unnecessary information.

At some point, you probably are going to want to say you’re cohabiting with somebody, if that's the situation, but decide when it's the most appropriate time to do that.

Otherwise the other parent finds out often from the children inadvertently. That's another important point: don't tell the children to lie for you or to keep secrets for you.

Decide how much you're going to tell them, realizing whatever they know they may end up sharing with your co-parent.