In the option of marriage there should be a choice as other. Product of of a one night stand and DNA
LegacyUser
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DougHo said: Although different options are often suggested, I am not sure it is appropriate for the situation you describe. They are parents, no marriage. So you don't add any marriage event. You could consider adding a Relationship Note, so that researchers who stumble across the couple don't waste time looking for marriage/sources.0
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Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community support forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.
When no marriage has taken place and there is evidence of parentage, leave the marriage area blank. Set up "biological" as the Relationship Type for both father-child relationship and mother-child relationship. For a source, add the DNA test that was performed and any court action taken with respect to establishing paternal responsibility.
If the father demonstrated paternal responsibility (which should show up with him living in the same household as the mother and child, or some evidence of providing child support, then that should be noted in the relationship notes.
Right now, the entire family relationship area needs a lot of work. The number of options available for the couple are limited to four, which is inadequate because in many cases, there are additional records involving the couple.
We have not been told much about the couple relationship area, but it is being set up to support **** unions, so more is coming. A number of underlying supporting systems need to be accounted for by the code, so it is taking time to get into place.
Any records or information about living persons cannot be seen by anyone but the person who entered the information, due to privacy laws. It is unlikely that will change anytime soon as the laws have become more restrictive where living people are involved. It is best to keep this information in a separate database. There are three fully qualified family tree management programs that interface (as much as currently is supported by FamilySearch) with the massive tree. Those are ideal for tracking living person information, sources, and other documentation. The three are listed in the Solutions Gallery and are: Ancestral Quest, Legacy, and Roots Magic. All offer similar features, though they may vary in the way those features are implemented. If you are familiar with the old PAF program, the Ancestral Quest is a good choice because it is fully compatible with the old databases and is written and supported by the author of the PAF program. All three programs have free versions that often are sufficient for most people, but you also might want to comparison shop.0 -
Leslie May Vaughn said: I agree with the original poster who said there should be a choice for one-night-stand/affair that has been proven by DNA. Absent that we should have an option to just leave the relationship blank. Currently the choices are annulment, divorce, common-law, married. and llved together. If it is too delicate to say that the relationship was just a fling, it would be best to have a blank to choose from.0
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Tom Huber said: The option to leave a relationship blank has always existed (that is, a single parent).
The key is whether or not the father and mother lived in the same household.
The basic rule that FamilySearch wants us to follow is to not list the father (of the child) with the mother even if he accepted responsibility for the child's welfare, but did not live in the household.
List each parent with the child separately and in the case of the father, provide ample notes in regard to the one-night stand or whatever the situation may have been.
Note, there are instances where a couple lived together for a short period of time, and then either the father (usually the case) or the mother abandoned the spouse and children. In those situations, it would be nice to have a marriage separation category of "Abandonment" where no divorce took place -- I have one of those in one of my ancestral lines.
The current married settings (married, lived together, and common law) are sufficient for those where the parents lived in the same household. The marriage separations (divorce and annulment) take care of the rest with the exception of an abandonment.
However, there is a point, where the father took on a certain amount of responsibility, but there never was a marriage and the couple never lived together.
I think the only valid option is with keeping the child listed with each biological parent separately. If the couple did not live together, then the appearance of a couple relationship should not be shown.
I am not sure what to do with no marriage or lived together, but the father has visitation rights. This needs to be addressed by someone in FamilySearch.0 -
Tom Huber said: DNA can only establish biological relationships. The key is still whether or not the father and mother ever lived in the same household (even if the relationship was incestuous).0
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Leslie May Vaughn said: A one night stand implied that the parents didn't live together. In many if not most cases the father never knew about the child, but the single act did produce a child. We all know that Family history is way my than genealogy, but it does include genealogy. The very definition of the word genealogy is the study of a person's genetic background. We have to be able to show the bio parents as well as the parents who raised that child.
Yes the key as it stands now is if the couple that produced a child ever lived together, bit I think that is a false key. The key should be who produced the child. Familysearch does a good job of allowing a child to have more than one set of parents. They just need to have more choices when describing the relationship--=or allow that field to be blank.
If the field for the relationship between the two parents could be just blank as you suggested in your response to the original poster, that would be nice
While we are at it there needs to be an additional category for the person who is on the birth certificate as a parent, but was not the biological parents. A suggestion would be birth certificate for all those cuckolded husbands.
I have seen a statement which would be hard to prove, but does ring true, that at least 10% of all children ever born are not the child of the father that the mother claims is the father.
That's a chunk of folks. As DNA tests become more common, there will be many that meet this criteria.
I know of no way to put a child separately with each parent without linking the parents to each other. But if there is a way, I wouldn't be interested in learning how to do it.
Honesty in recording these situations is important0 -
Brett said: Tom
I am sorry; but as far as I am aware (and, I stand corrected if I am wrong); but, there is NO basic rule in "FamilySearch" (or, the Church) where it is implied that "FamilySearch" "... wants us to follow is to not list the father (of the child) with the mother even if he accepted responsibility for the child's welfare, but did not live in the household".
If the "Biological" Father is know; then, list them.
If the "Biological" Parents did not 'Marry'; then, do not indicate such.
Whereas, for Members of the Church, the 'Ordinance' Work is another matter; but, totally devoid from including them in the "Pedigree".
As has been said, we should never 'whitewash' history, it happened, it must be recorded - we should not look at life through 'rose coloured glasses'.
We all know that the "Couple" Relationship area NEEDS some SERIOUS work.
And, we have been advised that such is being undertaken.
We all know that there NEEDS to be MORE "Couple" EVENT "Types"; as, well as other work - some has been added of late.
eg.
"Other Information" Section
"Facts"
- No Couple Relationships
- No Children
But, there is a long way to go.
But, to make that statement ...
Brett
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Leslie May Vaughn said: That's exactly my thought. We don't want to make a formal relationship if one didn't exist. The way things are now with the system, we MUST choose one of five possible relationships between the couple. All imply some sort of relationship. There is no option to not put one of those five choices. Which is what you and I don't want.0
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A van Helsdingen said: We must record the truth. The relationship status between the mother and father does not change the fact that the child had a father.
"I have seen a statement which would be hard to prove, but does ring true, that at least 10% of all children ever born are not the child of the father that the mother claims is the father"
On average, the rate of non-paternal events (NPEs) is around 1-2%, though in some places, timeframes, classes it may be higher, sometimes even more than 10%. There is some disinformation, "urban myths" and politically motivated falsehoods around on the internet claiming high rates of NPEs rather than the fairly low 1-2% that most studies find.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: That's not really true though, and it is quite easy to deal with in the tree. If there was no formal "Couple Relationship" of any kind, you just don't enter the two persons as a "Couple". Simple!
In the following example, you can see that Cecil's biological parents Wm. Woodward and Birdie Ivalee Thurman did not have any kind of a "Couple Relationship" (he disappeared very early in the game). In fact, Cecil's birth surname was recorded as Thurman--her mother's maiden name.
You don't have to worry about assigning one of those 5 couple relationship types to the couple relationship if there is NO couple relationship that exists!
This approach also has the advantage that no-one will come along and snatch the couple up with Ordinances Ready and immediately do the temple sealing for that pair of names (i.e., never a "couple")0 -
Leslie May Vaughn said: So without going into familysearch and actually looking at this couple, have you indicated why Cecil is assigned William Woodward as a father with no woman to create Cecil?0
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Jeff Wiseman said: Sure. The biological mother who created her was Birdie Thurman. This can be clearly seen above (by the absence of a relationship type inferring biological). Joseph Santee was her adopting father.
If Birdie had never been in a "couple relationship" after Cecil was born, the image would look the same only with Joseph's information gone.
Birdie Thurman and Wm. Woodward never had any kind of a couple relationship, therefore, THEY ARE NOT SHOWN as having had a couple relationship.
People seem to get hung up over insisting that the biological parents must ALWAYS be shown as a couple, even if they never were. In this case if you create a couple relationship between them in relationships area, it would be a lie.0 -
Tom Huber said: Getting back to Brett -- there are conditions involved with my statement:
A child is born to his/her mother -- The child is listed as the child of the mother.
A child is conceived by his/her father and if the father never lived with the mother (sperm or one-night stand) and/or never contributed to the raising of the child (such as child payments):
-- a) if the father's name is known, The child is listed as the child of the father to establish the biological relationship, separately from the listing with the biological mother;
-- -- no couple relationship is represented in the tree.
-- b) if the father's name is not known, the child is listed with the family who raised the child (in my case, the mother's parents) as well as the mother.
There are a number of articles that talk about recording children and parental relationships in Family Tree. Two articles dealing with this situation are no longer available -- I could not find replacement articles.
At this point, we need someone to provide the current articles dealing with children of unmarried parents -- there are a couple with surrogate mothers.
I think that the listing of a child separately with biological parents that never married or lived together may have changed from what it was. I would still follow the situation and what to do in a) and b) above.0 -
Brett said: Tom
I understand the 'conditions' involved with your statement.
But, regardless ...
Those 'conditions' DO NOT apply to what happened, it is history.
If the Child was the product of ANY Relationship (good; or, bad; or, otherwise); then, that should be recorded as it is, what happened.
Those 'conditions' ONLY apply to 'Ordinance' work.
That is WHY we need MUCH MORE work (all sorts) in, both, the "Couple"; and, the "Parent-Child", Relationships.
Brett
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Tom Huber said: Forget the vicarious work and consider the tree itself.
The relationship is precisely what I am reporting. The articles had nothing to do with vicarious actions and everything to do with properly recording the situation.
If you do not know the father's name, and the father was never part of the resulting child's life (and, as far as that goes, the mother's), then how, precisely do you record that?
To go one step beyond the birth, how do you record the person(s) involved in supporting the child through to adulthood?
Now if you know the father's name, do you actually put the father (who may have only donated sperm) in with the mother as a couple?
Go back a reread the situation. If I was not clear, then how would you explain how to record the instance of sperm donor or the male in the one night stand? As in a couple relationship with the mother?
When Jeff wrote (below)Birdie Thurman and Wm. Woodward never had any kind of a couple relationship, therefore, they are not shown as having had a couple relationship.
he is correct. I'm not sure why you are thinking that I'm saying something entirely different. I'm not.0 -
Paul said: In Family Tree I had shown the child exactly as Tom suggests, given the circumstances of an unknown "post-coital" relationship between the biological parents. However, the "official" situation did seem a bit ambiguous, so (some years back) I raised it here.
Whether I mistook the response (by Ron Tanner) or not I cannot be sure, but following this I switched to just showing the child under the biological parents. Perhaps the situation I have is slightly different to the examples described, in that they apply to children born around 200-300 years ago, so it is impossible to be sure, for example, what kind of support the father provided.
As Jeff has illustrated, it is perfectly simple to show a child beneath the individual parents - i.e. without them appearing under both in a relationship. Further to his illustration of the child appearing beneath (1) the the mother and stepfather and (2) the biological father, there is also the option to show a "third" relationship, with the child appearing under (just) the mother, too. If a child is illegitimate (with no known biological father) I list them in both an individual relationship with the mother and in one with the mother and known stepfather - the latter person is often clearly described as such in census records.
What is clear is the need for a "definitive" statement on this issue, from Ron or another senior manager - if not here, in a Knowledge Article. But it has to be conceded this will always be a grey area because the actual relationship between the parents (especially those who lived centuries ago) will possibly never be known.
In England, the existence of a "bastardy bond" from the original parish records might give an indication of financial support, but will still not show any evidence of any further ties between father and child.
So for now, it remains a matter of judgement - largely based on our knowledge of each, individual situation - on how we show the child in Family Tree. As a person who is not an LDS church member, I do think this issue extends beyond ordinances, however.
Hopefully, there will be an "official" response to this matter - though it will inevitably have to include "if and buts" to cover some of the exceptional issues (like multiple "stepfathers" or a "reputed" father, perhaps!) that might be involved.0 -
Paul said: Here's an example showing the difficulty in deciding how to place an illegitimate individual on the Tree. It shows the 1636 baptism of a Thomas DOW, reputed father Francis Halls. I have decided to revert to how I originally showed Thomas in FT. Note there is no record of his mother's (presumably "Miss Dow") first name. Also, should I even be showing him under Francis Halls, when he is only shown as the "reputed father"?
Incidentally, Francis Halls was married at the time. His last child by his wife was baptised in 1635 (a year before Thomas' baptism) and his wife died in 1639. Obviously, his relationship with either his wife (Diana) between 1635 & 1639, OR that with "Miss Dow" (before or after 1635), is not known
Extract from parish register:
Extract from Thomas Dow's person page:
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joe martel said: Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I might have missed some nuance in these replies but I'll provide a quick answer.
Basically the relationships are the primarily for connectivity of a person to other persons. They are then further described by the formal/legal concept binding them together, in addition to Biological - natural fact. The evidence, like Sources can be used to back up these relationship conclusions.
If a child has known biological parents then that child should show those parents together, the parent-child relationship. They may not be married... but they should be shown together. This makes the tree painting correct from the expected "pedigree" visualization.
Like the above:
The parent-child relationship to each parent would be Biological. But it could in other situations match any of the legal designators: Biological, adoptive, foster, guardianship, step.
If a couple are married... you can "Add Couple Relationship" (like this one already has) and a marriage event (typical legal designations: married, annulment, divorced, common-law) to those parents. And if they aren't parents you can still Add the couple relationship.
So for the above one-night stand I would expect to see the parents together with that child under them. The child has Biological The tree paints the way you would in an other program. In the parent-child relationship you can add a Note or a Source citing the DNA. If you put DNA in a Reason statement they will not always be seen, especially over time.0 -
Paul said: Joe
I have an open mind about this. However, I expect a number of other users will challenge your views. I'm sure Ron expressed things in much the same way as you, when I raised the issue here a number of years ago.
If you are right, I have just wasted time in positioning Thomas Dow under his separate parents (as shown above), after previously having him show just once, beneath his (assumed) biological parents!0 -
Tom Huber said: Joe (and others),
When we do not have all the facts about a child-parent relationship, then it seems to me that we move on as if the child is born to both parents in a family relationship. This certainly applies to families going back a century or more.
But when we have all the facts and know (not from family tradition) that the father was not involved other than the sexual act that resulted in a child, it is a different matter. This would apply to sperm donor situations, as well, where the donor is unaware of any children that were fathered from his donation.
In those cases, I maintain that there is no couple relationship and therefore, the child would be shown under each biological parent in a separate instance.0 -
Tom Huber said: From our ecclesiastical view, a previously-available article said not to seal the couple if no on-going relationship was found or known to have happened.0
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Leslie May Vaughn said: My situation is not centuries old but is in the here and now. My 76 year old husband had always suspected his birth certificate father who raised him, was not, in fact his father. DNA proved that several years ago. Just this year, we have identified his biological father as the neighbor down the street. We definitely know that his mother and this man had no relationship beyond a short affair.
My husband also had an older sister who grew up with my husband as a full sibling. DNA has proved that she has a father who is not my husband's father. We found that her father was also not the man to whom her mother was married. We do know that my mother-in-law was dating this guy prior to her marriage and apparently continued her affair after the marriage. She would have married him but exigent circumstances prevented that. He died in Italy from battle wounds in WWII.
So my mother-in-law had two children while she was married. Her children had separate father's, neither of whom where the children of her husband. She loved the father of her oldest child and grieved for him for years after his death. We have no way of knowing if love even entered into the short relationship with the second man (my husband's father.)
But my husband has recently contacted his newly found half-siblings and they are developing a relationship.
I understand the reasoning that my mother-in-law and her lovers should not be sealed to each other, but I strongly feel that my husband deserves to be shown to be the child of both of them together. Whether the relationship between my husband's parents was longer than 15 minutes or not, it was still long enough to produce him and having him sitting there with just the dad is not right, even if he is also listed with his mother and his ersatz father. We would also like to show the half-siblings as part of his family
I think there should be a way to show both parents in that 15 minute relationship and at the same time put some restrictions to not allow sealing to occur in that instance.0 -
S. said: I ponder the same question as the Topic, How would you label people that need labels not listed in the current form. If people were to Put out Ideas, it might help every one, My thoughts would be Bio/Dna Related.0
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Jeff Wiseman said:
If a child has known biological parents then that child should show those parents together, the parent-child relationship
The latter part of that statement makes no sense. Showing the parents "together" is the Couple relationship and NOT the Parent-Child relationship.
In the all biological situation, there are at least 3 DISTINCT relationships that need to be individually documented
1. Parent-Child relationship of the child to his/her father
2. Parent-Child relationship of the child to his/her mother
3. Couple relationship of the Father to the Mother
Each relationship is assigned a TYPE
FS uses a "T" type graphic everywhere to represent these 3 separate relationships all glommed together. Although this may seem simpler than the far more accurate triangle structure, this results in everything from the change log to the relation editing views becoming rather ambiguous.
Here’s an example:
In the latter case a person would normally think that BOTH the parent-child and the couple relationships for Birdie were being remove. However, because of the ambiguity, that would be wrong. FS will remove Birdie as Cecil's mother but the couple relationship between Joseph and Birdie remains intact. Here is an actual example for what the above image seems to imply:
Because of the ambiguity of this method, you cannot even show the removal of the parent child relationships graphically. It has to be spelled out in text.
This is what happens when the implementation structure doesn't follow the natural structure of the circumstances being dealt with.0 -
joe martel said: Jeff, good questions and this is the weakness of any UI that has to map multiple data objects into some coherent, yet hopefully not too verbose way.
The couple relationship is the relationship between two PIDs.
The parent-child relationship is the relationship between a child PID and her one or two parent PIDs.
The UI could have been designed to separate and not consolidate this. But most genealogy programs show it this way, with the couple event as a possible modifier when there is a child.
The parent-child relationship is independent of the couple relationship and vice versa.
Answering your red questions:
1. 2. That relationship view is kind of a short cut. The horizontal and vertical lines make up the indicator. This is a parent-child relationship with both parents defined. It doesn't reveal anything about there being a couple relationship. The more verbose view in your second example reveals that.
3. This relationship view has a bit more detail. Same as above showing the parent-child relationship. But in this view it shows a marriage event - that is from the couple relationship.
That red X is severing the mother from the parent-child relationship. You only see this because you came from the context of the parent-child relationship and hit edit/delete on the mother. The text at the top of that image says "Remove or Replace Mother", this parent-child relationship will be modified". Again it is dependent on your context.
The other red X image is in the context of "Remove or Replace Spouse, The couple relationship will be modified".
Should we have different text to describe what is happening?
THese UI views are fairly common in most the programs I've seen.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Joe,
So for the above one-night stand I would expect to see the parents together with that child under them
There is a conflict of interest here and FS needs to belly-up to the lemonade stand and establish the standard to be used by defining exactly WHAT a “Couple Relationship” is.
It makes no sense to graphically document two people as being a “Couple” and then having to add a relationship type or note stating that even though they are shown as a couple, that they really are NOT a couple!
Personally, I don’t mind too much which way this goes but it needs to be clearly defined by FS. If ALL biological parents are to be shown as a couple (regardless of whether they were or not), then I guess that we will start seeing “Mr. Sperm Donor” as the biological father in some couple-relationships. It also means that the way things like Ordinances Ready work, “Mr. Sperm Donor” and the mother will eventually be sealed in the temple.
Ron Tanner (among others) has made it clear that such things should NOT happen. If it is well documented that the mother and father were never a “Parenting” couple, then they should not be sealed. But if we insist on recording BOTH “Biological Parent” couple relationships (regardless of the type of relationship they had) AS WELL AS “parenting” couple relationships, this is likely going to happen.
So this is the conflict:
Traditionally, biological parents were always shown graphically as a “couple’ on pedigree records. This was fine for showing blood line lineages for property and inheritance purposes. Today it is also used when charting DNA relationships. These are all “Biological Parent” couples relating to the blood lines, but NOT necessarily “Parenting and Child Raising” type couple relationships.
However, a key purpose of the FSFT is to organize and show true family groups headed up by “Parenting and Child Raising” type couples for submission to the temples.
So for Family submissions to the temple we should only record “Parenting and Child Raising” type couple relationships. If a “Biological Parent” couple relationship existed, but it was NOT ALSO a “Parenting and Child Raising” type couple relationship, it wouldn’t meet the criteria of being sent to the temple, so the parents would not be recorded as a “Couple”.
If FS wants the tree to always show biological parents as having couple relationships, The need to make it very clear as it runs contrary to what Ron Tanner seems to be saying and what many people think the database is for. DNA and blood line tracing is still possible in the database, even with some “Biological Parents” not being recorded as couples.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: And if they have incorrectly been recorded in the FSFT as having a couple-relationship, Ordinances Ready is guaranteed to see to it that the couple is sealed together.0
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Jeff Wiseman said: I understand what you are saying about verbosity, I understand the need of a person to remember the context they are in (but of course they will frequently forget), I now understand the meanings of "X"s in the relationship editing (it wasn't real obvious to me at first), and I understand the need to try and simplify.
But a (correct) picture says a thousand words. If the picture is structurally correct and obvious, you just don't need a lot of extra text. In general, if the documentation is structured around a structurally correct interface, in general you need a lot fewer words. I once took a 5000 page section out of a new product documentation set and reduced it to about 15 pages by simply rearranging the structure of the documentation (it also made things a LOT easier to find :-)Should we have different text to describe what is happening?
The text that has appeared to be added recently in these areas does help. My preference is always that if diagrams can be skillfully used to eliminate text for mitigating confusion, it should always be done that way....most genealogy programs show it this way...
This is something that I see a lot of in the FS website. It is the mimicking of other programs. I kinda think that FS engineers need to not look so much at what others are doing since the FamilyTree is unique in the mandates that it must meet. How many other programs out there are set up to specifically feed names which have been prepared into the temple system? How many systems are set up to eliminate duplicates and maximize accuracy in as short a time as possible via a shared tree?
...These UI views are fairly common in most the programs I've seen...
FS engineers should be looking at the specific needs of THIS system and not just blindly copying mechanisms from all of the other systems out there, since this system is DIFFERENT in most cases. Without really recognizing this, these concepts could be tangential to what is really needed.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Paul, this seems totally appropriate to me. Even if Francis was "reputed" to be the father--that is evidence and it should be recorded as you did. The parent child relationship should have that source and maybe a note indicating that this is the only source info currently available and state your concern (actually, I would include it in a Note attached to Thomas and an identical one attached to Francis. That way it won't get lost down in the cryptic tunnels of the parent child relationship data that is never obvious)
If later on someone comes along and provides new evidence disproving that parent-child relationship, then you make the change then based on the new (and old) evidence. That is exactly how the shared tree is supposed to evolve. It seems to me that you have done exactly that.0 -
joe martel said: Viewing relationships, parent-child, couple have always been difficult and doesn't get into "associations" beyond those relationships. I would love to see a display that accurately and concisely illustrates the various permutations of relationships. Or if you think there's another product that does a good job at this I'd love to see that too. There's always room for improvement, that is understandable b,y the customer base and hopefully resources to pull-it off.0
This discussion has been closed.