My son (living) created a tree and tried to add it to mine but he does not see me.

Rick6930

My son (living) created a tree and tried to add it to mine but he does not see me. I tried to add him using his ID but it doesn't find him. Is it because he and I are living?

Is there any way to merge his "him" and my "him"? Is there anyway we can work on the same tree?

Thank you

Chas Howell

@Rick6930, short answer is no. For privacy reasons each person's Living can only be seen by the person who entered them, so he cannot see your Living and you cannot see his Living. Both you and your son will have to put in your own copy of each Living person. You cannot share a living tree but you do share the same Deceased tree.

Now there is some hope of that changing in the future with proposed enhancements to the Family Group function. I haven't heard much about that lately, but I know FS is working on it.

See New Family Tree Features in link:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/whats-new-in-familysearch-2023#/DefaultPermission?c=1698969192824&vanilla_category_id=blog-comments-en&vanilla_identifier=00000185-07e4-d82f-a1bf-3fffb11f0000&vanilla_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.familysearch.org%2Fen%2Fblog%2Fwhats-new-in-familysearch-2023

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The answer to your first question -- can you merge the two living profiles -- is no. Those are separate and invisible to others, by design, for privacy. (As Chas says, they're working on a Family Groups feature that will sorta-kinda allow you to combine forces on living family members, but that has not been released yet.)

However, the answer to your second question -- can you work on the same tree -- is a resounding "yes, of course": the Family Tree on FamilySearch is a single collaborative and open-edit tree, intended to have one and only one profile per deceased person.

Notice that next-to-last word, though: only profiles that are marked "deceased" are publicly visible and editable. So your son will need to create his own profiles for his living family; he'll hook up to the same tree that you can see once he gets to his (and your) deceased relatives.

Note that since only he can see the profiles he creates for you and other living family, he doesn't need to -- and in my opinion, shouldn't -- enter all of their personal details. The best way to protect private data online is to not put it online in the first place. Profiles marked "living" are just placeholders or links, and they only need enough information for him to know who it is.