Step parents

WPBA

From Darren Andrews

1. When a parent is designated as a stepparent the system should not

send notifications about the step and their ancestors AND should not be

used to connect people via the Relative Finder feature

2. A preference should be given to display the tree either with no

spouse in the place of the step parent or with the step parent

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Your second suggestion already exists. When a profile has multiple spouses or sets of parents, you can use "Set Preferred" to change which one is shown in tree views. If you attach the non-step parent a second time without a spouse, and set that "couple" as preferred, then the tree will display with no spouse.

(The screenshot is from the beta site, not production.)

Gail Swihart Watson

I agree with #1, but you need to expand this. The Rootstech "are we related" and "find my relatives" features also have this quirk, as does the famous relative feature. And it is NOT just step. All three of these features will use adoptive parents, foster parents, guardian parents and biological parents in addition to step parents to find your relatives, famous or not.

Then there is the problem of asking FamilySearch to use only a biological connection. Biological relationship between child and parents is NOT the default setting. It will only exist when someone deliberately edits the relationship.

So what IS the default relationship? Look carefully. The default relationship between any given child and its parents is "Add relationship type," ie the default relationship is considered undefined. THIS is why the algorithm is the way it is.