Hello! You have information on your biological family. That is great! You can show both families on Family Tree. Family Tree has the capability of accommodating multiple types of family relationships such as adopted, biological, foster, guardianship and step. You can set the preferred parents on the Person Page and they will show on the pedigree. You can toggle back and forth as desired depending on which line you want to research that day. 

   To begin please specify the relationship to your parents as adoptive. As you add biological parents, specify their relationship as biological. You will be listed under 2 different couples. Use the box to check-mark the one you want to show on the pedigree. Both couples will always show on the Person Page. You will be there twice on the Person Page. On the Pedigree views there is only one listing – the one you chose as ‘Preferred’ on the Person Page. (So you make the change on the Person Page but see the change on the Pedigree)

For articles from the Help Center Use these search words:

Adoptive, step

Specify relationship

Set preferred

       We applaud your desire to have an accurate family record. We wish you all the best in your family history work on both lines!

Please share with your patron. Thanks for your precious service.

@RaniM, as I read your original post, I understand your concern about users who have created a new record for someone who is already in Family Tree before they discover that their new record is a duplicate. When they merge the duplicate record from their new record, that becomes the surviving record, and as you have said, it is harder to get to the Latest Changes which track everything that was done on the record which has now been deleted through the merge.

Please don't be discouraged if this happens because you can do one of two things.

1) You can restore the deleted record and merge the other way which will allow the new record to be the one that is deleted leaving the older record as the surviving record.

2) You can click on the name on the deleted record, then go to the Person page that represents that record. In the information about that record, you will see the Latest Changes for the record that was deleted and should be able to carefully track anything that is connected to the record that was deleted. This type of investigation is most helpful especially when the merge introduced incorrect information. I love that the person who responded before me provided the link to explain how to fix incorrectly merged records. This additional knowledge article explains how to restore a deleted record if you wish to simply reverse which one will be deleted from the system.

https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-restore-a-deleted-record-for-a-person-in-family-tree

The purpose of Family Tree is to allow family members to work together to build their family tree. since your sister has a Family Search account you can collaborate. However, you will only be able to share information relating to deceased persons in the tree.

Your sister will not see any living people you have entered into the tree, and you will not see any living people your sister has entered, as living people are stored in the contributor’s private space to protect privacy.

We currently do not have a way for a family group to share a private space and work together on it. Multiple users can enter a record for the same living person into their own private space.

• Each record has a different ID number.
• Each record is visible only to the user who entered it.
• When you change a record in your private space, it does not change the same person's record in another user's private space.
• After a person dies, family members need to make all separate records in their private spaces public and then merge them.

Adding living generations connects you to your deceased ancestors. For example, adding your living parents allows you to connect back to your deceased grandparents. Deceased people can be searched for by ID.

Please also look at these articles in the Help Centre -

How does Family Tree protect the privacy of living people?

Can my living relatives share a Family Tree private space to work together?

I don't know if this will help but your sister will need to manually enter any living people into her tree. i.e. if your parents are still alive she will need to add them to her tree manually which isn't too time consuming since it is just full name, birth date and birth place. If your grandparents are still alive she will need to do the same with them. If your great grandparents are deceased then she can add them to her tree using the ID numbers that you can give her. Once she enters this first deceased generation then everything will populate automatically behind that person. So she will need to do a little manual labor but not too much.

Hi,

You ask to which family you should add your mother’s son. The answer is to both of them!

When you go to your mother’s Person page in the Family Members section you will find under your mother’s name “Add child with an unknown father”. You can add him there and you can also add him to the grandparents’ family. 

Make sure you use the same record with the same ID number. For the second addition you would use Add child by ID.

When you do that, you will need to “Add Relationship Type” to both the grandparents. You can do this by clicking on the Edit button to the right of the child’s name and the on Add relationship type and then by choosing the option which is most suitable. If the relationship is not biological nor any legal arrangement, guardianship is probably the best option.

See this article: https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-specify-biological-step-adopted-and-foster-relationships-in-family-tree

1) Copy the ID number of the person you want to merge away.

2) Go to the person you want to merge into.

3) On the right hand side of that person's detail page, scroll to Merge by ID:

4) Click there, paste in the ID number, click continue then proceed with the merge.