Need to Add Date to Marriage Records Keys
I have a few times run into situations where the same couple married more than once. It could be marriage -- divorce -- remarriage; or it could be marriage -- divorce -- marry another spouse -- divorce or widow/widower-hood -- remarriage to original partner. It appears currently impossible to enter these remarriages as a separate event. Anything I've tried to get this to work I get "This Relationship Already Exists". The only thing you can do is to record the second marriage date onto the first marriage. In which case you have something like 1st marriage date followed by divorce date followed by 2nd marriage date (all of which does not show on the default person screen).
FS should consider including the marriage date in the key to the marriage records; that would allow a second marriage record for the same people. Subsequent divorces could show as additional fields on the appropriate marriage record. The problem with the current kludge is that the person screen is unable to show anything but the earliest marriage (unless you expand the marriage events area, which most people wouldn't automatically do) yielding a very confusing and misleading picture in this situation. FS takes care to sort and display multiple marriages in date order, but if the remarriage is a third marriage, then you get the second one following the third one on the person screen, which erases any intended convenience.
I understand that this is an uncommon occurrence, but people do get married, divorced and then marry again, and the person screen should show that situation clearly, as it does for other essential facts.
Dave Perry
Comments
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I've a cousin, married 5 times - twice to the same lady. Another man on a collateral line, same thing for that cousin-- twice married to the same woman. If a marriage is an important event, why does it get 'disappeared' if its a 2nd marriage -- as if it has no importance?
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Don't confuse relationships with events.
A relationship is a connection between two profiles. The connection has no date or place; it simply exists or not. If it exists, then you cannot make it exist again.
Couple relationships can have a nearly-endless series of associated events. FS will even allow the same event to be entered multiple times, as long as there's some difference in how the date or place is labeled. (Which of course means that in the one circumstance where there legitimately were two events, namely, civil and church marriage ceremonies on the same date in the same town, you have to come up with awkward kludges to enter them both.)
Unfortunately, in the current setup, only the earliest event is displayed for any particular couple. This works pretty well for most pre-20th century profiles, because they generally have just one event associated with each relationship. As you say, it doesn't work nearly so well for the variations that people started coming up with once divorce became possible. However, even if the display is modified to accomodate showing multiple events, I don't think the Family Members section will ever show a re-marriage separately: the section groups people by relationship, not by event.
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seems like these unusual situations are best suited for the Notes Section.
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