not married but can't figure out how to show in tree

glynblake

Hi, how do I un-marry a couple. I put in two people as parents of my grandmother but now the tree says they are married and they weren't. I am only given the option to remove or replace the 'husband', but that's not what I want to do, I want to remove the marriage as the tree is now saying the woman's married name which is incorrect, thank you.

Alan E. Brown

There are two primary kinds of relationships in Family Tree: a couple relationship and a parent-child relationship. In this case, you certainly want to preserve the parent-child relationship connecting the child to the father and mother. The only remaining question is what to do with the couple relationship that currently exists between the father and mother.

The couple relationship can be edited from the mother's (or father's) page by clicking the pencil icon to the right of "No Marriage Events" immediately below the parents in the Spouses and Children portion of the Family Members section (don't use the pencil icon to the right of the child, since that is used for editing the parent-child relationship). Here you can do either of two things, depending on the facts in this case:

• If the parents lived together (you said they were never married, but didn't indicate whether they lived together as an unmarried couple), then you can add a "Lived Together" event: Click "Add Event" then in the dropdown at the top, choose "Lived Together"; you can then enter a place and date(s) if you know them.
• if the parents never lived together, then you can delete the couple relationship: Click the Delete Relationship button at the bottom, then provide your reason statement.

Note that if you delete the couple relationship, the father and mother will still appear in the Spouses and Children section. That sometimes confuses people, since they are not spouses of each other. But they do share a child, so that is why they need to appear there. A new button will appear labeled "Add Couple Relationship" immediately below the parents' names, which is your confirmation that the father and mother do not have a couple relationship.

Paul W

@glynblake

I don't quite understand what you are seeing here. Firstly, when two individuals appear together it is in a "Couple Relationship", so there should be no indication they were actually married, unless a marriage event has been (erroneously) assigned to them. Also, you say " I put in two people as parents of my grandmother…". Well, unless the woman has been merged with another individual (carrying the surname of the man), either you would have added her maiden name, or left the "last name" blank when creating her profile, so, from your comments, it is not clear how his last name got added to her.

In short, you can leave them exactly as they are and just edit her last name to her birth / maiden name. If there was no "meaningful relationship" between the pair, some users would enter their child under each of their individual profiles, but remove the current relationship. If you find this all rather confusing, please return here with any further query - preferably providing ID references for the individuals concerned, so more specific advice can be offered.

glynblake

sorry, I am confused. I cannot remove the relationship without removing the child. it lists the father of the child under spouse and I am unable to delete the relationship between the father and mother of the child. they were never married.

GLDF-N3Q [father]

GWXB-LJ5 [mother]

GWXG-LVX [child]

glynblake

Thank you for your help, it is indeed a confusing website, all my messages have now disappeared. It would also help if I received alerts to messages received. anyway, have followed your instructions, thanks again