It is a two-family house where doors don’t mean much but the common roof is everything for the single mothers who share the mortgage and the care of their young sons there.

Kelly Wilk and Erin Corrigan bought their sunny east-end semi for just over $1 million about two years ago. Overlooking a leafy park with a skating rink in the winter, the house is more than either woman dreamed of affording on their own. Together it was possible through a legal co-ownership agreement that means they share the mortgage and expenses.

More than the financial benefits, however, the house is the centre of the life the women share and nurture. It is where widow Wilk, 41, has managed to move past the shadow of grief that followed the sudden death of her wife, Kara, in 2012. It is also the cosy nest into which Corrigan, 40, wanted to welcome a baby on her own.

Theirs is the kind of unconventional partnership they are trying to encourage through a podcast called Fashioning Families, which has the two discussing everything from insemination and breast milk to baby showers. Corrigan uses a pseudonym here and in the podcast because she wants to keep her personal life confidential from her work as a health care practitioner.

“I’m not sure what I would have done if Erin hadn’t presented me with the opportunity,” Wilk said.

She found herself a sole-support parent to son Ben, who is now 8. She was unaccustomed to being her family’s main income earner and the home she had shared with her wife was in serious disrepair. Her wife was the handy one and had planned to renovate. But Wilk didn’t have the resources on her own and the house kept deteriorating, making it difficult to sell.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to afford any kind of place. I was actually panicking,” said Wilk, a reflexologist, writer and Reiki practitioner.

She had known Corrigan since university. They had continued to dive in and out of one another’s lives.

“Our lives keep aligning with loss, with children,” said Corrigan, sipping ice water in Wilk’s upstairs living room, while Corrigan’s 1-year-old son napped in her apartment below.

Corrigan, who calls herself the louder, more direct of the two friends, was the one who brought up the idea of co-owning a house. She had been in relationships with men but decided to have a child on her own. But she didn’t have the money to put a down payment on a home.

“(Co-owning) was a way that I could be in the housing market without borrowing from anybody and also the idea of having another person around that I trusted when I was having a baby was huge,” she said.

It took Wilk a couple of months to settle on the idea, not because she doubted Corrigan but because it felt like saying goodbye to her wife over and over again — the house and neighbourhood they had shared and the idea of parenting their son by herself.

“Once I got through realizing that those are actually good for me even though it hurt, I did it,” she said. “I didn’t want to have an empty space any more. It was actually advantageous for me to fill that up to compensate for everything I lost.”

They looked at several houses “that could work.”

“We really wanted our own living space to maintain our separate lives and separate families. We walked in and said, ‘This is exactly what we want,’” said Wilk of their 1960s home.

There were wish lists and compromises. Corrigan desperately wanted a backyard for her future child and rescue pooch, Chica. Their place has only got a back patio but the park across the road makes up for it. Coming from a basement apartment, she also loved the light that streams through the wide front windows of both apartments.

Wilk got her full-sized bathtub, something she missed in her previous house, and Ben, whose main wish was for a wide house with a pointed roof, got the bunk beds he desired in a big fire engine-red room chock-a-bloc with toys.

The house is actually broken into two, two-bedroom apartments. There is also a rented basement suite, a shared laundry and double-car garage where Corrigan parks her car.

Wilk paid the $500,000 down payment on the home so Corrigan pays 60 per cent of the mortgage, utilities and maintenance. They use a joint account for all house-related expenses. They repaired the floors and remodelled the bathrooms when they took possession.

Corrigan manages the finances for the home and has taught Wilk how to separate her business from her personal spending. Wilk says she does most of the cooking and child care. They share everything from clothes to furniture and eat dinner together about four times a week. But there are other days when the pair don’t even see each other.

“We have separate houses but we live as a family,” said Corrigan, adding that, “We’re really aware of each other’s boundaries.”

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Their legal agreement provides for exit strategies. If someone wants to sell, the remaining partner gets first right of refusal on buying the other share of the property. Both women are open about eventually wanting partners in their lives and about the uncertainty of what that could bring to their living arrangements. If one of them moved out and wanted to rent their place in the shared house, the other would need to approve the tenant.

In addition to the home though, they share the load and the laughs. Wilk was there for the birth by emergency C-section of Corrigan’s son. They use the term “co-parenting” to describe their care of their children. Ben has free run of the upstairs and downstairs but is expected to knock and announce his arrival at Corrigan’s place. There’s a baby monitor on Wilk’s shelf that tells her when Corrigan’s son has awoken from his nap. After he’s bounced around to his favourite music, climbed into bed with Riley, Wilk’s ginger cat, and hauled himself upright on the furniture, the little boy is dispatched to a playpen in the corner of his “Auntie Kaka’s” living room.

People often mistake Wilk and Corrigan for sisters or partners, not only from their interaction with one another but also gauging the ease with which they handle the children. Wilk’s family and friends have been protective and sometimes questioned her cohabitating arrangement. But they have come around, recognizing how much happier she and Ben have become.

“The reason emotionally this made so much sense for me was because I was under such duress,” Wilk tells Corrigan. “You were the one who was around who wasn’t in a couple like all my other friends. The universe keeps putting us together.”

That is not to say there aren’t challenges and tensions as there are in any family. Sometimes they have to walk away and reflect on what just happened and the value of their relationship.

Co-parenting can be a source of friction, they say. They have different styles and sometimes she is watching her friend rather than her wife parent Ben. But she says her son is thriving under the added responsibility that Corrigan gives him.

For Corrigan, a pro at managing on her own, “it’s about learning to collaborate.”

“We’re a lot more compassionate with each other than I think you probably would be with a partner,” she said.

Even before they started living together, after Corrigan made the decision to have a baby, the pair were producing their podcast with interviews and discussions between themselves aimed at others considering or experiencing solo parenting, co-parenting and cohabitation.

“We hope to support other people the way we feel supported,” Corrigan said.

Wilk said it’s the kind of shoring up she could have used herself when she was alone with a baby.

Now, she says, “I’m where I’m supposed to be. This was a second chance for me to uncover a lot of layers in me that would have probably gone unnoticed if I hadn’t had the opportunity to find them after Kara died.”

For Corrigan, “It’s turned out better than we ever could have expected.”