One main home or alternating residence: what it really costs the contact parent

There is more between the two models than a split of care. For the parent who does the travelling, the difference lies above all in what nobody counts.

This guide is written for parents in Germany and describes German maintenance law and practice as it stood on the publication date. If your child lives in another country, different rules may apply.

Published on 7 September 2026

The two models in three sentences each

Residenzmodell (the child lives with one parent): The child lives mainly with one parent. The other parent has contact, classically every other weekend and in the school holidays. The resident parent provides their share of maintenance by caring for the child; the other pays cash maintenance (Barunterhalt).

Wechselmodell (alternating residence): The child lives with both parents for roughly equal periods, often alternating week by week. Both run a complete household for the child. Maintenance (Unterhalt) is split between the two parents differently from the Residenzmodell.

In practice, a lot falls in between. A child who spends every other weekend and half the school holidays with the other parent lives in neither model in its pure form.

What the contact parent carries on top

The debate about the two models mostly revolves around shares of care and maintenance. For the parent who does the travelling, though, something else is decisive: how much effort falls outside every calculation.

• Travel costs and travel time. They rise with the distance, not with the share of care. Over a long distance, the journey is the most expensive part of contact.
• The second household. A child's room costs the same whether the child sleeps in it four nights a month or fifteen.
• Buying things twice. Clothes, school things, sports kit, so that not everything has to travel along every time.
• Accommodation on the way, when the distance rules out a day trip.
• Days of leave for the journey. Holiday care costs both parents annual leave. For the parent who travels, the travel days come on top, and the dates are tied to the arrangement instead of being free to plan.

As a rule, the parent entitled to contact bears the costs of contact themselves. So whoever travels a lot carries more, without that showing up in any maintenance table.

A worked example

Suppose your child lives 400 kilometres away and you collect them every two weeks for a long weekend. That is 26 contact times a year.

• Driving: 400 kilometres each way, there and back twice per contact time, so 1,600 kilometres. Over 26 contact times that comes to around 41,600 kilometres a year. For comparison: the circumference of the Earth at the equator is just over 40,000 kilometres. In one year, then, you drive a little more than once around the Earth.
• At 30 cents per kilometre for fuel, wear and depreciation, that makes about 12,500 euros.
• Food on the road and during contact: 60 euros per contact time, around 1,560 euros.
• Outings and admission tickets: 40 euros per contact time, around 1,040 euros.
• Buying things twice over the year: around 600 euros.

Together that is about 15,700 euros a year, without the share of the rent for the child's room and without the time. Add a good 400 hours in the car if you allow four hours per leg: 104 legs times four hours.

The figures are an example, not a calculation for your case. The point is the difference in scale: contact over a long distance is not a bit more expensive than contact nearby, it is many times more.

What this means for your documentation

When maintenance, a contact arrangement or a move is being discussed, the travelling parent's effort is the point for which figures are least often on the table. Not because there are none, but because nobody has written them down.

So record three things: the kilometres driven per contact time, the receipts for each contact time, and the contact times that were cancelled, with the reason given. From these three series, any later question can be answered. Without them it stays an estimate, and an estimate loses against any table.

What else happens on these journeys does not belong in the same series. For that there is the guide Keeping a memory book: what remains when your child lives somewhere else.

Further reading

This text is for orientation, not legal advice. In a dispute, only a lawyer specialising in family law can help.