Mom left kids home alone for over 10 hours while she went out drinking, deputies say
BEXAR COUNTY, Texas (Gray News) – A mom in Texas is facing charges after authorities said she left her children home alone for more than 10 hours while she went out drinking.
According to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, a 12-year-old girl called 911 on Jan. 18 to say that her mom abandoned her at home with her younger sibling for over 10 hours.
Deputies responded to the home and found two children, ages 9 and 12, alone.
The children told deputies their mother had told them she was going to pick up a package from a friend nearby but did not return.
Officials identified the mom as 36-year-old Misty Dawn Lewis.
Investigators requested a cell phone ping for Lewis, which led them to an undisclosed location in San Antonio.
Deputies found Lewis there, who appeared intoxicated and smelled of alcohol, the sheriff’s office said. She also had a small amount of cocaine in her possession, deputies said.
Lewis admitted she left her children at home alone, deputies said.
Lewis was arrested and charged with two counts of abandoning or endangering a child. She is facing an additional charge of possession of a controlled substance of less than four grams.
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‘Isolation isn’t the way forward’: readers on their unusual living arrangements
We spoke with five people from Atlanta to rural Germany and the UK whose households range from grandparents to three couples who own a farmhouse
Nicola Slawson and Jane ClintonFri 30 Jan 2026 18.08 GMTShare
‘How many grandparents can say they get to hold their grandchild every day?’
In Atlanta, Carolyn Martinez, 65, lives in a household spanning four generations – and a lifelong friendship. Her 90-year-old mother, who has lived with her for more than 40 years due to various disabilities, shares the house with Martinez, 65, her adult daughter, aged 25, and her granddaughter, aged three months. “My mum has lived with me literally all my adult life,” she says. “She just wasn’t able to live by herself.”
The household also includes Martinez’s best friend of more than three decades, who originally moved in “for a few months” after a divorce. That was 25 years ago. “I could not have raised my daughter as a single mother without her,” Martinez says. When her friend, now aged 79, was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years after moving in, the arrangement became permanent. “There was no point in her leaving,” she says. “By then she was an integral part of our household.” Her friend is now “Tía” (auntie in Spanish) to her children and grandchildren, a role Martinez says reflects how deeply friendship can function as family.
Earlier this year, Martinez’s daughter moved back home when she became pregnant, adding another generation to the household. “How many grandparents can say they get to hold their grandchild every day?” she says. “It’s a blessing.” While the house can be busy and hectic, it’s also “a lot of fun” and Martinez says having multiple adults around makes life easier emotionally and practically. “There’s always someone to say: are you OK? Is there something you need?” she says. “You don’t have that if you live alone.”
Martinez has always lived this way and can’t imagine doing otherwise. “It can be harder work – or maybe just different work,” she says, particularly when living with friends rather than relatives. But she believes the benefits outweigh the challenges. “It keeps me young and it keeps me connected,” she says. “Living like this keeps us all on a more even keel than any one of us would be alone.”
‘The real thing that’s held us together is how we party’
In rural Germany, Tracey Kelliher, a 48-year-old Irish musician who has lived in Berlin for 17 years, is part of a group of three couples who bought an old farmhouse together despite barely knowing one another. The idea of communal living had been something she had long imagined for the future, but the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the decision. “We really followed our gut,” she says. “I’m a calculated risk-taker – not a lunatic – but this just felt right.” What began as a practical choice, driven by affordability and a desire not to do it alone, quickly became something deeper.
Before committing, however, Kelliher and her girlfriend, Wallis, had serious reservations. “We had a bit of a panic moment,” she says. “My way of dealing with it was: I need more information. I basically needed to see into the future.” It was only after a group conversation, where others acknowledged the scale of the leap, that she felt able to move forward. “They said: this is scary. It’s a scary decision,” she says. “And even if it doesn’t work out, everything’s going to be OK. That was all we needed to hear.”
When they first got the keys, the house had no heating and no running water. “We’d be wearing ski suits indoors,” Kelliher says. “You could tell the temperature by how much you could see your breath.” The group spent their early months chopping wood, tending fires and collecting water together – conditions she describes as unexpectedly bonding. “Even that was kind of team building,” she says. “You become a family really quickly when you’re living like that.” Although she had initially imagined needing strict private space, she found herself loving the intimacy. “The communal way of living was a gift I never knew I wanted.”
What surprised her most, however, was how the group really cemented their bond. She assumed it would be through the renovation or shared artistic interests. “But actually the real thing that’s held us together is how we party,” she says. Evenings around the fire became central to their life together. “We sing together – we didn’t know that beforehand. It turns out we can all sing. We’re doing four-part harmonies, dancing around the fire, with a guitar or music on.” She describes it as the “glue” that turned a practical arrangement into a family. “That’s what solidified us.”
Friends and family, particularly those back in Ireland, were concerned when they heard the idea, she says, often focusing on what might go wrong – even though many admitted they longed for the same thing. “Almost everybody wants it,” Kelliher says. “People know isolation isn’t the way forward.”
The group, who all maintain homes in Berlin and split their time between the city and the farm, put significant effort into making the arrangement work on paper as well as emotionally. Unable to secure a group mortgage, they set up a company and drew up contracts covering everything from inheritance to what would happen if couples broke up. “For me, that’s perfect,” Kelliher says. “It means I don’t ever have to think about it. It’s done.” Over time, formal meetings gave way to more organic decision-making, underpinned by trust. “What makes it work is that we put other people before ourselves,” she says. “There’s no malice – if something comes up, you just say it.”
Now, four years on, the renovation is nearing completion, with separate living spaces and shared communal areas. Their biggest concern, Kelliher says, is not conflict but distance. “Our worry is that we might end up spending less time together – and none of us want that.”
‘My son has grown up seeing that friends can be like family’
In Bristol in the UK, Natalie Bennett lives with her 10-year-old son Ruben and his father, Aaron, her longtime friend with whom she has never been in a romantic relationship. When Bennett fell pregnant unexpectedly, they decided to do things differently and moved in together despite only being friends. “I didn’t want all the parenting to fall on my shoulders as a single parent. I wanted to see if we could do things differently and parent as friends,” Bennett says. After initially living together for two years, they separated households for several years before moving back in together when Aaron’s flatmate decided to move out, and he realised it was going to be difficult to rent alone with a child.
Living together again, she says, has made day-to-day life easier and less isolating. They split bills and childcare, share cooking and bedtimes and even co-own their home, even though their finances remain separate. “It’s not that different from parenting as a couple,” she says. “We get the benefits of that without being in a romantic relationship.” The arrangement has also meant her son no longer moves between two homes and they all get to see more of each other.
Their household is also shaped by friendship. Bennett’s close friend Alex – who previously lived with her son and his father – also lives with them two nights a week, helping with childcare and cooking. His support is invaluable, Bennett says, describing it as the village everyone talks about needing when you first have a child. “My son’s grown up seeing that friends can be like family.”
Bennett, who is doing a PhD on single parents with important non-romantic relationships, believes these kinds of platonic relationships are often undervalued, particularly when it comes to raising children.
Bennett says the biggest challenge has been navigating social expectations. “People assume you’re meant to be hostile if you co-parent or that romance is the only real intimacy,” she says. But living this way has changed how she thinks about family and support. “I think people would be less lonely if they felt able to expect more from their friendships.”
‘We kept noticing little ways to help each other out’
Sara Anastazia, 47, and her friend, Mia, moved in with their respective children when both women were going through a divorce.
“We began sharing a beautiful, big, five-bedroom home in 2023,” says Sara, who is a community strategist and lives in Philadelphia. “It was a temporary six-month let while the owner was abroad. At the time, my kids were 14 and 16, and Mia’s were 12 and five. It was incredibly helpful to live with another mom. We kept noticing little ways to help each other out and support each other, like with the laundry, getting ready for school, food shopping, chores and sharing meals. Our costs went down tremendously, and we both like to cook, so we would enjoy meals together.”
She says they agreed to some very loose ground rules, but they “trusted each other” and it worked out.
When the owner of the house returned, Sara and Mia, who is a cook and culinary educator, and their families moved out. “We went our separate ways for about a year, but we were still in touch,” says Sara. “Then in August of 2025, we lucked out and found an upstairs-downstairs rental.”skip past newsletter promotion
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Sara now lives in the two-bedroom downstairs with her son, 19, who stays two or three times a week. Her other son, 16, joins them for dinner from Sunday through to Thursday. Mia lives in the four-bedroom accommodation upstairs with her children, who are 14 and seven. “We share meals together one to two nights a week,” she says. “Our kids know each other a lot better now, and we all made cookies together at Christmas. We share the yard, and this spring we’re looking forward to gardening. Coffee and tea mornings together are my joy. We also hold regular work sessions and have worked together hosting events.” They keep costs down by sharing the internet and car insurance.
Sara and Mia feel very strongly about inspiring other women who may be going through divorce or a relationship break-up.
“It is very important to both of us that we can support women in our local community who are trying to navigate difficult situations,” she says, with them letting women stay when they have the room.
“That is a priority for us. We really want to inspire other women who are trying to extricate themselves [from a relationship] and show the creative ways to do this.”
She says of their living arrangement: “I highly recommend this strategy for anyone exiting a relationship.”
‘I can’t imagine a better place to raise a child’
A conversation Peter Reimer had as an undergraduate with one of their favourite professors about housing cooperatives spurred them to investigate this living arrangement when they moved to Chicago.
“I found one, was interviewed and got a spot,” says Peter, 31, a data analyst. “I have been living in this co-op since 2018, but have moved houses within it. When I moved in, I put down a one-month security deposit and a membership charge of around $35.”
Peter met their partner in 2018 at a co-op dinner. They are married and now have a two-year-old with another child on the way. They live in a 22-person house. For the first year and a half of their child’s life, they had just one room, but now they rent a second room and hope to rent another in the future, though they will have to wait until someone moves out before one becomes available.
“As membership turns over, we can rent more rooms without moving, so it’s a lot less hassle,” says Peter, who adds that the support network of the house has been hugely helpful as they bring up their child.
“My partner works remotely as a therapist, and sometimes she needs exclusive access to the room,” they say. “We are doing some co-parenting with some of our housemates, so we always had somewhere for the kid to nap when my partner was working.”
Their rent gets them a room in the co-op and access to the common spaces. Depending on the size of the room, Peter says you can expect to pay between $500 and $800 a month, which is cheaper than the going rate for studios and one-bedroom apartments in Chicago.
“At the co-op you have a room, access to a large kitchen, a big dining room, common spaces, a bike room and a big yard, but they’re not just yours – you’re sharing them with other people,” they say.
Rent includes the water bill and maintenance of the house. The housemates pay for electricity, heating, internet, their food, a rainy-day fund and an education fund, and the cost for all these is between $200 and $240 a month, depending on means.
In Peter’s house, there is one room with an en-suite bathroom, and the remaining 21 people share six bathrooms. Everyone in the house is expected to do chores, including cooking and cleaning, totalling about five and a half hours a week.
“I can’t imagine a better place to raise a child,” says Peter. “It’s cheap, the common spaces are way bigger than I could afford living on my own, and I love living with people. The community, solidarity and mutual aid within the house are unparalleled. The only price is more time on meetings and figuring out living compromises, but it’s a small price to pay.”
Home Ownership When Parents and Adult Children Live Together
Takeaways
- Multi-generational households present legal and financial challenges around home ownership.
- Different home ownership options are available to multi-generational families, such as joint ownership, tenants in common, and life estates.
- Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it is important to consult with an estate planning professional to determine the best option for a specific situation.
Increasingly, several generations of American families are living together. According to U.S. Census data, about 20 percent of the population live in households containing two adult generations. These multi-generational living arrangements present legal and financial challenges around home ownership.
Questions Your Multi-Generational Family Should Answer
Multi-generational households may include “boomerang” children. This could be adults who return home after college or other forays out into the world or middle-aged children who’ve lost their jobs. Seniors who have lost their spouse or who no longer can or want to live on their own also may opt to live with their grown children.
In many cases, when a parent moves in with the family of one of their adult children, everything works out well for all concerned. However, it’s important that everyone, including siblings living elsewhere, carefully consider answers to a host of rather difficult questions. These may include:
- If the aging parent owns the house, what happens when they pass away? Will their grown child’s family have to move out of the home? If the aging parent leaves them the house, will the other siblings find that fair?
- Perhaps the aging parent has instead decided to leave their children their savings and investments. However, what happens if the family must spend that money on care for their aging parent?
- Imagine a senior parent pays to build an in-law addition on their daughter’s house.
What guarantees should the aging parent have about being able to live there? What if the aging parent then must move out because they need care the family cannot provide? Would their daughter simply get the advantage of the property’s increase in value? What if the aging parent needs the money they put into an addition to live on?
- What are the Medicaid issues if the elder need nursing home care within five years?
- Who will care for the elder if they acquire a disability? Will it be a family member, and will the elder pay them for their services?
- Think, too, about paying for living and housing expenses. Figure out what everyone’s expectations are before a move takes place.
- What happens if the aging parent is living with their daughter and son-in-law who end up divorced? What if one of the adult children gets a great job offer in another city?
- If grandchildren are still living at home, is the aging parent expected to help with child care?
- How do the answers to the questions above change if everyone is pooling their resources to purchase a new home for the whole family?
Many of these questions are challenging to answer in the abstract. Have an open discussion about them with your loved ones at the start. Consider taking notes on the answers and reviewing them together as your circumstances shift over time. This can help avoid any arguments down the road.
Home Ownership Options
The answers you’ve come up with may lead you to consider different forms of home ownership. Depending on your family’s goals, one of the following options could prove a potentially worthwhile solution:
Joint Ownership
Let’s say the elder parent, their daughter, and their son-in law own the house as joint tenants with right of survivorship. In this case, when the elder passes away, the house goes to the other owners without going through probate.
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This strategy could have a specific advantage if the elder ever needs Medicaid to pay for long-term care. The family may be able to avoid estate recovery (the state’s claim for reimbursement at their parent’s death).
Some states have expanded the definition of estate recovery to include property in which the Medicaid recipient had an interest but which passes outside probate. In those states, property in joint ownership may in fact be subject to estate recovery. If the house is sold while the owners are alive, the proceeds (absent another agreement) will be divided equally among the co-owners.
Tenants in Common
In another scenario, perhaps a mother, daughter, and son-in law own the house as tenants in common. After the mother has died, her share would pass on to whomever she has named in her will. This may be fairer to other family members, but does not avoid probate.
As with joint ownership, if the family sells the house while all the owners are alive, the co-owners would (absent another agreement) divide the proceeds equally.
Life Estate
A life estate is a form of joint ownership where the elder family member is the “life tenant.” This means they have the right to live in the house during their lifetime. At their death, it passes automatically to the “remaindermen.” This can be anyone the mother had named: a daughter, son-in-law, or all her children equally.
Like joint ownership, it avoids probate and thus may also avoid Medicaid estate recovery. If the family sells the property, the elder parent and whomever is on the deed as remainder men divide up the proceeds, with the shares being determined based on the elder’s age at the time. The older they are, the smaller their share and the larger the share of the remaindermen.
Trust
Putting the house in trust is the most flexible approach because a trust can say whatever the person creating it wants.
It can guarantee the senior parent the right to live in the house and compensate their grown child for the care they provide. It can also take into account changes in circumstances, such as a daughter passing away before a mother. At the same time, it avoids probate and Medicaid estate recovery.
Consult an Estate Planning Professional
Each of the options outlined above also will have different tax results. When you sell the home, you may see different impacts on capital gains, for example. You also could see Medicaid benefits change for your parent if they need help paying for care.
Be sure to consult with an attorney to determine what makes the most sense in your unique situation. Find a qualified estate planning attorney near you.
