"May have another spouse" when one is just "deceased"
I don't know if this was just random or what, but today I worked on three different profiles with the "person may have another spouse" suggestion — where the other spouse had no death date entered.
In one of the cases, it turned out that he predeceased his wife by twelve years. The system was helpfully suggesting that I look for another spouse of a corpse.
Can this suggestion please be set so that it only appears if both people have at least death years entered?
Answers
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I noticed a similar issue on a profile I was working on this week. I have not found a death for either half of the couple and have no idea, yet, if he survived his spouse or if she survived him.
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The research helps such as "May Have Another Spouse" is triggered by a person living past the death of their spouse by several years. It doesn't make a difference even when the surviving spouse is deceased, the suggestion will still be presented. You can always dismiss these research suggestions if there are no additional spouses. Here is a link.
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Wayland, but the point is that it's making the suggestion even when the spouse DIDN'T live "past the death of their spouse". The suggestion is being offered when it is completely and utterly inappropriate, because there is not (yet) enough information on the profiles to make the determination of who outlived whom and by how much.
For example, the suggestion was offered with the following vitals entered: Ferenc Stein 1897 - Deceased, married 1922 to 1925 to Mária Kern 1899 - 1943.
Based on what was on the profiles, we knew that Ferenc died at some point after his divorce (1925) and before today. We had zero information on when in that century he actually died, so suggesting that he lived long enough to marry again was simply false: he may have lived long enough, or he may have died of joy when he received the divorce decree. When the suggestion was offered, we had no idea which scenario was true.
I subsequently turned up Ferenc's death in 1931. I don't know what that information would've done to the suggestion, because by then I had rather irately dismissed it. Yes, I'm aware that I can dismiss the suggestion. My point is, I shouldn't need to do so in such situations.
(Yes, he did have another spouse: in 1919, he married Aranka Tóth 1898-1921. That's not the direction that the suggestion talks about.)
@Áine Ní Donnghaile, are you saying that it's offering that suggestion when the vitals have just "NNNN - Deceased" for both spouses? Yikes.
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I don't see how it is "completely and utterly inappropriate" or "simply false" to offer a suggestion that could be possible, given the current data in Family Tree. You're certainly right that it's possible that once we discover the death date, we will come to understand that there could not have been another spouse. But when no death date is yet supplied, it's possible that the person lived many more years, and so could have had another spouse.
These are research suggestions, not data warnings. If they were presented as data warnings, I would agree with you entirely. But when the current data allows for the possibility of another spouse, I see nothing wrong with suggesting that looking for a missing spouse could possibly be a fruitful avenue of research.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi I went into beta family search to see the profile of Ferenc Fulop Stein before you made the changes. The suggestion was indeed removed when a death date was added to his profile. Family Search, in making suggestions, can only operate on the data that it has. You are recommending that the "another spouse" suggestion only be given if both parties have a death date. I guess that would work but I wouldn't recommend doing it. The suggestion is there to encourage more research on the incomplete profile. I don't know if that is what was encouraging you to do more research or not. Nevertheless, you did more research and the profile is now much more complete. Ironically, in this case, Ferenc could very well have had another spouse following Kern Maria Erzsebet since they were divorced in 1925 and he lived to 1931. But I don't think the "another spouse" suggestions takes into account divorce. I agree with Alan, the suggestion for more research on an incomplete profile is always appropriate.
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I'm fine with being presented with these suggestions, although I admit I have only noticed them in situations where a spouse (typically a female who died soon after childbirth) has a death event inputted, but her "other-half" does not. For me, the suggestion adds as a "jog" to check-out what actually did happen to the surviving spouse. Can I find them as "widowed" in subsequent census records, or is there either a further marriage to be found for the surviving partner, or did they die soon after their spouse?
To the experienced researcher, this (and other types of) suggestion can be rather irksome. ("Doesn't 'FamilySearch' think I haven't got the common sense to work out that an individual might have remarried?") However, I believe these suggestions can be particularly useful for the more inexperienced genealogist, who might be inclined to "walk away" from a profile when the attached relationships are far from complete.
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Here's the exact wording of the suggestion:
Person May Have Another Spouse
There is no evidence of another marriage, but this person lived long enough after the last spouse passed away to marry again.It's the definitive statement that "this person lived long enough" that's simply false. We don't even know whether he or she lived, never mind "long enough".
While suggesting more research is certainly appropriate, suggesting that people go looking for a possibly-impossible event is very much not appropriate. In cases where a death date hasn't been entered, looking for the person's death should come long before any search for more spouses. And in no case should the suggestion state as fact something that isn't known and may very well be completely false.
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Just a question: Did all three of the profiles you ran into have a divorced date? Or just the one?
If all three did, maybe the divorce date is triggering the suggestion and they are unfortunately using the same wording for the suggestion even though the wording makes no sense and should be changed to "Person May Have Another Spouse. There is no evidence of another marriage, but this person might have lived long enough after being divorced to marry again."
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No, the other two cases yesterday were not divorced (https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LBYK-32Z, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LBYK-32Z).
I don't think the suggestions algorithm can see the couple relationship area at all. Adding a marriage event doesn't remove the "missing vital event" suggestion, and it never makes suggestions about prenuptial children or other things that use relationship-specific data.
Re-wording the suggestion would certainly help, but something that doesn't reference divorce would be better: maybe "… but this person might have lived long enough after the previous marriage to marry again." (Or should it be "may have"? Ugh, English. :-)
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I offer as proof that the hinting system has no visibility into the couple relationship section the fact that I encountered the "couple may have children" suggestion on profiles with the following vitals entered: husband 1820-deceased, wife 1818-1904, marriage event 31 August 1882.
(I dismissed the suggestion with the comment "perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the bride was SIXTY-FOUR YEARS OLD?!?".)
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At this point, I'm looking for a way to just turn off the purple ones. They never make any sense.
I just dismissed the "mother was too young to stop having kids" suggestion on a couple where the husband died a week after the birth of his youngest. My dismissal reason included the sentence "It takes two, you know."
Does anyone have any idea what criteria the various hints use? Where's the hole in the logic that allowed this one through?
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