Spurious merge error: A parent cannot be merged with his or her child.
There are two profiles named William Lawrence, (LK9K-1MT) and (K4K2-FXW). They have almost identical vitals, in part because users appear to have copied data from one to the other.
Production website
This is where I first encountered these profiles. Each of the profiles has a single parent/child relationship with the same parents, William Laurance (LKCF-DMQ) and Eliza Martin (LTV4-NW1), and a single spousal relationship with a wife Elizabeth Adams (K4BF-6JV). One of the profiles (LK9K-1MT) has 10 children and the other (K4K2-FXW) has none.
I attempted to merge the two profiles, but I got an error message at the first step: "A parent cannot be merged with his or her child.". The error occurs regardless of which direction I attempt the merge, and regardless of whether I use the current or new improved merge experience. On 22 September 2025, another user left a note on one of the profiles, saying that they had encountered the same problem.
In order to try to find the cause of the error, I inspected the descendants of the profile with children and the cousins of both profiles. I found nothing that would account for the error.
I have made no changes to the profiles in the production website.
Beta website
When I first looked at the profiles in beta, they were, as far as I could tell, identical to those in production. The most recent changes to the two profiles were on the same dates in both sites (c 22 or 23 September 2025). In order to try to find the cause of the error, I removed their relationships one by one, checking the merge after each removal. The error persists, even after I have removed all relationships from both profiles, leaving them both with no parents, no wife and no children. I have tried the usual placebos, such as clearing cookies, and logging out and in again, and using a different browser (Edge instead of Chrome) for beta.
Conclusion
Given that the error is persisting in beta where neither profile has any (visible) relationship with any other profile, I assume that there is some sort of corruption in the profiles. The concept of merging a parent with a child doesn't seem to have any meaning when the profiles have no relationships at all. One for the engineers, I would think.
Best Answer
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The duplicate records can now be merged.
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