Change a Person From Living to Dead

Marilyn Larson

My relative, Richard LeRoy Lauver's account needs to be changed from "Living to Dead", and have his account deactivated. His ID# is L6JL-FLB. He is a non-member. He died on 20 September 2017, in Scottsdale, Maricopa, AZ. His FindAGrave memorial # is 184061974.

Thank you for sending this on to FamilySearch Support.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

That's something you can do yourself, Marilyn. https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-change-a-status-from-living-to-deceased-in-family-tree

Marilyn Larson

You cannot change a person from living to dead in their own account. I tried this and it said that you cannot change your own account from living to dead. I tried merging him with another ID# but you can't merge a living and a deceased person. I think it has to go to FamilySearch support.

lstolk36

Marilyn,

Please follow the steps in the attached knowledge article.

How to I change the status from living to deceased?

Find the person in your private space in Family Tree, and enter death information so that other Family Tree users can view the record.

Steps (website)

1. In Family Tree, navigate to the person details page.
2. In the Vitals section, to the right of Living, click Edit.
3. Click in the circle beside deceased.
4. Enter the date and place of death and the reason the information is correct.
5. Click Save.  

https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-change-vital-information-in-family-tree

 

bathompson

Hello @Marilyn Larson,

 Your question will be forwarded to a specialty team for review and resolution. You may be contacted by that team if they need to gather more information.

I will send you a confidential message requesting some more information.

Thank you

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@Marilyn Larson since you had the PID, I presumed the person you mentioned was in your private space.

Marilyn Larson

I can see why I was confusing, but this was his account. Thank you, bathompson for forwarding the case.

Bruce Wilkinson

This issue was forwarded to the specialty team and here is the recommended process:

Your relative, Richard LeRoy Lauver's person record is already in the public Family Tree with his death date recorded. It is Richard LeRoy Lauver 13 May 1922 – 20 September 2017  •  LYS7-XQG and can be found by searching either by the ID or by his name and other vital information. That is the only record for him in the public tree that we could find.

So, the record that you are seeing with ID of L6JL-FLB is either a record that was created in your own private account or it is a record that is in his own FamilySearch account that actually belonged to him and which you have access to in order to see it. We infer that it is the latter since you have said that it is his account and not yours. If it is a record in his own account, then it must be his "Root Person Record" which, because it is part of the foundation of his account and is the root of his tree, has special restrictions to keep the account from being corrupted--which we will describe. We also infer that you knew him well since you are apparently able to access his account.

Although we are advised against accessing the account of another guest, it is sometimes necessary, with the permission of the account owner, for reasons of ability. However, regardless of our respective access to his account, neither you nor we are able to change the root person record of an account to the status of deceased--as you appear to have discovered. It also cannot be deleted except by deleting the account. Nor can it be merged with any other record although other living records in the private space of the account could be merged into it to delete them as duplicates.

And, by security policy, FamilySearch Support is not allowed to delete an account at the request of anyone except the owner who must be on the phone with us at the time of the request.

So, if you wish his account to be deleted (along with any private information that was uploaded to the account such as memories), then you must do it yourself by signing in and clicking on his name in the upper right corner of his home page and clicking on the Delete Account link at the bottom of "Settings." You will then get a brief dialog explaining what will happen to information owned by the account. You can then click "Continue" to be signed out and the delete request put in a pending status. However, when you sign into an account and delete it and are signed out, you must sign in again to complete the delete process--that will schedule the account for deletion and it will be disabled and then deleted. If you cannot do that with this account and, since, clearly, he cannot do it, himself,--nor can he give permission for us to do it--then it will inevitably be consigned to remain in the system along with all the other accounts of people who have passed on before deleting their accounts.

Prior to deleting his account, you may want to check to see if there are any artifacts or relationships in it (memories, family relationships) that you wish to preserve. You can preserve his public memories in your account by creating an album for the memories in your Gallery for them and linking them in to the album. You can preserve private memories by downloading them and uploading them to your account.

Relationships to living persons that you wish to preserve can only be done by adding those person records to your account and adding their relationships to his public record which we presented in the first paragraph above.

Although we could have sent this as a private message, we are leaving the answer here for informational purposes for others who wish to be able to answer similar problems as there is no private content that you haven't disclosed in your updates.

We trust that this answers your question and provides you with your alternatives for resolving the issue.

Best Regards