Living records

RandyHansen

Is my family doing this right?

I have 8 siblings. My father is deceased, and my mother is living. I have created a record for my mother which comes with its own unique record number so that I can see her ancestors. I have linked that record to her parents which gives me visibility to all of her generations. My other siblings have created unique records for my living mother. We now have 8 unique records for our mother. At some point, we can merge these 8 unique records so that we are all using the same record, but it looks like that will happen after my mother passes away. Are we doing this right?

lookingfortheanswers

Yes you are. This is done to Family Tree protect the privacy of living people.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Yep, you are doing it exactly as designed and intended: a single profile for deceased people, such as your father, and separate private profiles for living people.

Note that your profiles for your mother can be bare-bones placeholders, with just a name, or not even that ("Mom" works just fine). Keep the personally-identifying information offline in a genealogy file that you can share with your siblings. You can add those details to the online tree after she has passed and therefore no longer needs any privacy protection.

dontiknowyou

I also recommend using minimal placeholders for living persons.

CookeWilliamB1

The above statement on privacy is correct. Yes as your mother and father had 8 kids and she is living, she has 8 different IDs. When your mom passed away make sure that her ward clerk does his job so her death date and location. Are official. And may your mom live a good long life.