Unwed, child born out of wedlock, etc.
Please consider adding another "Relationship Type" that would apply to a couple that were not married at the time of the birth of their child; such as "couple not married", "unwed couple" or something else that would describe the relationship between the parents of a child that was born out of wedlock. Perhaps also being visible in the place on the screen where a marriage is expected.
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@RLLAnderson This is an oft requested feature. FamilySearch not having implemented it seems to imply you must use the options currently available.
Here is a Help Center document that details the current options:
Does Common Law Marriage or Lived Together suffice your situation?
If there was no Marriage Event you can simply enter them as a couple but add no Marriage information:
Or if there was no Couple Relationship you can add them separately with a Biological relation to any child:
The difference seems quite obvious - either they were a Common Law couple or they were not - Lived Together or didn't, Married or did not.
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"The difference seems quite obvious - either they were a Common Law couple or they were not - Lived Together or didn't."
Although, @genthusiast, how are we supposed to handle a couple who lived together, had one (illegitimate) child, then got married and had several more...?
If the desire is to mark up the status of the relationship between the parents at the time the first child was born, then there are two statuses that need to be recorded - "Lived Together" and then "Married". Yet we can only mark a relationship with a single status, IIRC.
Personally, this applies to my 4G GPs but as I know the date of their marriage, I'm happy that anyone can look at the date of the birth of their first child and the date of their marriage and work out what went on.
But I'm not certain what other people's requirements and expectations are for this case....
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Take a look at the following beta site example:
https://beta.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/BMW9-6VT
https://beta.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GQK2-NQN
If the couple married - you can have several Marriage Events - one Lived Together before the Marriage Date and of course the Marriage event. Does this help?
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One problem with your suggestion is that if you input to the Couple Relationship area, say, "Lived Together before 1900" and "Marriage 19 December 1900", the "Lived Together" event will be displayed on the Details page.
Until FamilySearch provides the much-requested option to choose which event one wants displayed on the Details page, I don't see this as a good idea.
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Hmmm I was seeing both events in beta (when you look at the relationship details of course). Ok I concede it would be easier to see both events up front - but the events are visible - one click away...
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Multiple couple events are only visible if you pretend you want to edit the relationship by clicking the pencil.
The display popup (the result of clicking anything other than the pencil) only shows the earliest event, same as the Family Members section.
Until/unless this changes, I highly disrecommend relying on the couple relationship section for anything, really.
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Oh: and for the ordering/display of the test in Beta, what you were seeing was a demonstration of how the date-sort algorithm completely ignores modifiers. "Before 1900" and "After 1900" are sorted identically, as 1 Jan 1900; the tiebreaker is the timestamp (the order they were entered). The "Married" event was entered before the "Lived Together" event, so the display showed the "Married" event.
I changed the date for the "Lived Together" event to "before 1899", and now that's the event that shows, unless you click the pencil to "Edit Couple" (per the tooltip).
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"Ok I concede it would be easier to see both events up front - but the events are visible - one click away..."
But I think, @genthusiast , that the desire is for a single, simple status value to show as a Relationship Type. Yet, as others have said, there simply isn't a single Relationship Type available - only a series of events where we see only the first such event. You're perfectly correct to say that the full story is a click or two away but it's evident that many people won't make those clicks unless prompted - and we have no viable means of prompting them yet.
So the current state is that in your Beta Test example, the "Lived Together" status (which isn't a Status, it's recorded as an Event, of course) over-rides the Marriage event. To work out the correct story, right now, requires the reader to look at the dates and think whether that makes sense. Does "Lived Together Before 1900" imply a later marriage? Actually, I don't think it does, so there isn't a lot of incentive to look deeper...
I personally think that there is no way that a simple single status will work - that Relationship section needs to be altered to list all the events - or maybe allow the updater to specify which events so that a sequence of Lived Together / Marriage Licence / Marriage / Divorced (say) can be set to show Lived Together / Marriage / Divorced, with their respective dates.
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RLLAnderson I love your suggestion. There are situation where the biological parents did not have a relationship other than being parents of the child. I don't like the idea of having the child linked separately to each parent because generally someone will change that. I think having the option of a status "Not Married" or something like it is a great suggestion. There are several examples where the couple did not live together or even have a relationship.
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I have a situation in my family like the one being discussed; an adopted relative where I have set up the family relationships for maximum understanding of who they were married to and who their children are. I did not "couple" the birth parents. All the birth relationships of my adopted relative are now known, and in fact I myself have spoken with 2 members of my relative's birth family: the birth mother herself (now deceased) and a husband of a paternal half-sister who is very involved in family history. He and I have collaborated several times and are in email contact. My relative's birth parents never lived together. My relative was born then they were teenagers in high school, so putting them together as a couple is a ridiculous notion. After my relative's birth and immediate adoption (a few days later the process began), the birth parents went their separate ways, married other people (birth dad twice) and had numerous children all of whom are half siblings to my relative.
So, my adoptive relative has 3 sets of parents in FamilySearch, all now deceased. Birth mom and her husband are together with a marriage connection, along with their children. I show a "step" relationship between him and my relative, and "biological" between relative and mom; I list all the maternal half siblings under them, where my relative display among them. Very clear.
Then there is birth dad and his 2 wives along with their children. Again, my relative is set up as biological to him and step to the 2 wives. This allows my relative to be listed among the paternal half siblings.
Finally, there is adoptive dad and adoptive mom and adoptive siblings and again, adopted relative is listed there with the same last name as the parents.
So, this is a very long display, but it is a very clear display and anyone with access can see at a glance exactly what makes up this family group, although since my adoptive relative is still living, technically only I and adoptive relative's family can see it. I helped one of the sons set up a FS account and link himself to all the relationships. My adopted relative, spouse and 2 sons now have the clearest picture ever of their birth heritage and which siblings belong to which set of parents. It broke my heart when the one son told me that as a child he always felt he had no family on this parent's side, and now he can see the names as well as the rich heritage he comes from and *finally* some of the names of the many half aunts and uncles he has. (I haven't put all the living half siblings there, only a handful.)
To anyone who says a birth requires parents to be shown as a couple, I say this: it is FAR more important to show the bigger picture of the entire family rather than create the false impression that a man and a woman were "together" when in fact they were not.
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