How to show parents' of an illegitimate child in FS?
An ancestor of mine, Sigrid Simensdatter K4YY-D4W and Osten Jensen LL4C-Z3J had an illegitimate child Gunda Ostensdatter MXPZ-B7B. There were not married and didn't live together on subsequent censuses. FS gives me the option to seal them, but that doesn't seem appropriate. Can I delete their relationship and still keep both as biological parents?
Answers
-
You are talking about a situation where there was NO real Couple Relationship between the biological parents. The reason that FS is giving you the option to seal them is that they are documented as having a true "Couple Relationship" between them. Having no Couple Relationship Events (such as marriage or divorce, etc.) does not correct this. You just need to remove the Couple Relationship entity between the parents which will move them into separate "Couple Relationship Boxes" and FS and Ordinances Ready will stop trying to get them sealed together.
Here's an example of one of my great grandmothers Cecil Fern Santee:
Note that when you do not explicitly identify the type of parent-child relationship there is, that is the default which means "Biological". So you can see Cecil's biological mother Birdie Thurman and biological father Wm. Woodward who had no formal Couple Relationship between them (therefore they are not in the same Couple Relationship Box)
Also note that Cecil's surname as given in her birth records was "Thurman" (i.e., her mother's maiden name) since Wm. Woodward was no longer in the picture. However not long after Cecil's birth her mother Birdie got married for the first time to Joseph Santee. Although Joseph was originally Cecil's step father, he soon afterwards formally adopted her thus giving her his surname of Santee. You can see the non-biological relationship between Cecil and her adoptive father Joseph in the image above as well.
So all you need to do is to edit the Couple Relationship of the parents and then in the edit window, select "Delete Relationship"
In FamilySearch FamilyTree there is no need to document a relationship between a man and woman just because they produced a biological child between them. Temple ordinances for families basically have no DNA rules that must be upheld. That is for inheritance and DNA tracing. The temple sealing ordinances are for FAMILIES where parental and spousal commitments existed. If it is obvious from the historic record that there was never a formal family related commitment (i.e., a Couple Relationship) between the biological parents, then they should NOT be documented as though there was.
You may run into a situation where others want to keep making this same mistake and so you might want to add a collaborative note to each explaining why they are not formally documented as spouses.
0 -
Thank you so much! I have deleted the couple relationship as you suggested and the biological father and mother now show in a relationship box with the option to "Add Couple Relationship". A little confusing, but looking at the Ordinances, it gives the following helpful explanation:
- These people do not have a couple relationship but are the parents of a child. If they were married or lived together as husband and wife, add a couple relationship to link them as spouses, so that you can request the sealing. If they were never married or never lived together as husband and wife, do not have them sealed.
Makes sense now. Thanks for the help!
0 -
That's good. However now *I* am confused 😶
Normally that action that you did would have put each of the parents into a separate box with an "Add Spouse" button. The "Add Couple Relationship" button seems to be new. This is another surprise change by FS that I am just now seeing!
It used to be that the Couple Relationship box consistently meant the same thing. Now it's a bit more ambiguous. Also, the only way to create such a display is to actually enter two people in a new couple relationship first, and THEN delete the couple relationship that you just created which seems a little screwy. After you've done that, there's no way to change it. The little pencil and paper icons for editing couple relationships doesn't exist in this new hybrid type BOX, so how do you DISCONNECT someone from such a box? (Appears that to separate them you will be forced to first add a new couple relationship so that you can delete it again!) There also seems to be a minor change in the pedigree chart supporting this.
I've obviously not had a chance to look at this close but it is likely based on an attempt to allow you to keep both names of biological parents inside the same box only without a couple relationship existing. This reduces the "Add Spouse" button that so many people seemed concerned about and allows people interested in focusing on DNA tracing to use the same structure.
Anyway, I can see what they are attempting but there are certainly some issues that they haven't addressed.
0
