We need a option under relationship to child as "Other"

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Randy Rudeen said: We need a option under relationship to child as "Other". Child conceived by another man, while mother is married to her husband.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: I would probably use "biological" and "guardianship" labels for the fathers, with a note explaining.

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Tom Huber said: As I mentioned in your other entry, this is already covered. The idea of "other" in a relationship has been mentioned before, but is unnecessary.

The relationships are:
Biological
Step
Adopted
Foster
Guardian

These cover all possible relationships.

Note that "Guardian" does not have to be official, so it covers all situations that are not covered by the others, all of which have an official relationship with those who raised the child.

LegacyUser

Randy Rudeen said: Guardian is defined as "a defender, protector, or keeper". So, that does not seem descriptive enough. I still believe in today's world something like "no relationship, child created" or "no relationship, Bio/DNA" or blank allowing for free form details to be entered is needed.

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Randy Rudeen said: I am not talking about relationship to child, I would like the above to be considered for the man and woman that created the child, but have no relationship.

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Kerry Palm said: Doesn't Biological cover this situation?

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Randy Rudeen said: yes, for the child to the parents. See my second post.

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Kerry Palm said: If you don't put in a relationship type for the parents then there is no relationship. They are just the parents of the child.

I suppose you are saying having the parents in the same box makes it appear that there was a relationship.
So "No relationship" as the type could be an option. Yes. I can see that would be a solution.

LegacyUser

Kerry Palm said: I can see that having the parents in the box together looks like they had a relationship even though there is no relationship type entered.

Having something such as "no relationship" would make it clearer as opposed to just leaving it blank.

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Tom Huber said: Guardian is an official relationship that has been in use for more than a century. In 1840, one of my ancestors died leaving behind small children. There is a probate entry that sets up the children as guardians of an older brother in that family.

Hm. That's a little confusing. The older brother was declared to be the guardian of the younger children in a probate court case (Indiana).

The term is quite common with respect to genealogy.

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Don M Thomas said: Randy Rudeen, I had a situation somewhat like your situation. I had a Great Great Grandmother who had a relationship with two men after the death of her husband who died near the ending of the Civil war. My Great Great Grandmother did not marry either of these two men. The two illegitimate children created by the relationships with these two men took the married name of my Great Great Grandmother as their surname.

What I did was to show my Great Great Grandmother married to my Great Great Grandfather and with their legitimate children.

I was lucky and knew the names of the two men my Great Great Grandmother had relationships with, so next I showed my Great Great Grandmother with each of the two men she had relationships with. .

I put NEVER MARRIED in the the place section under marriage to get rid of the red exclamation mark. FamilySearch does not like us to do this but I did it anyway since I knew my Great Great Grand mother did not marry these two men.

On her "Details" page go to the box with the pencil in it that is to the right of the marriage date section and hit on it and a pop-up will come up.



Next go over to the "Relationship Event" and hit on "Edit" under the name marriage. An "Edit Event" box will pop up. In the box type in NEVER MARRIED under "Place of Marriage" and under "Standardized Event Place" pick anything.



Hope this kind of helps you in some way.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: At the present time, we do not have that option. Within the ecclesiastical requirements from the sponsor of the site, certain software (Ordinances Ready) will see two people listed as a couple, and set up a vicarious temple sealing for them.

It may be possible, but will require modifications to other programs, to set up and use "No (Couple) Relationship" as a flag to those other programs.

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Juli said: It is possible to enter biological parents separately, with no relationship to each other.
Here's an example of an illegitimate child with unknown father:

If the father were known, he could be added using the "add parent" button. He would then show up on the child's profile as a separate pair of boxes, with him in the top slot, and an "add spouse" button in the bottom slot.

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Adrian Bruce said: Hmm, that might be possible but I fear it is capable of misinterpretation. Someone might think that Researcher-A believes that X is the mother, but has no idea of the father, while Researcher-B (who could even be the same person exploring another possibility!) believes that Y is the father, but has no idea of the mother.

As I've said before, we should always have an explicit, positive confirmation of something.

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Adrian Bruce said: As I say to Juli below, we should always have an explicit, positive confirmation of something - in other words a marker in the IT that explicitly says "No ongoing relationship between these two people". We should not be relying on the absence of a relationship having meaning. The meaning could be "Oops, I forgot" or "Ooops I leaned on the delete button"

But yes, it also requires coding to set it up.

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Don M Thomas said: Randy Rudeen, do you know the name of the other man who your ancestor had a one night stand, or relationship with, and is that other man deceased?

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Jeff Wiseman said: The parent child relationship types would make this obvious. There can only be one biological father and one biological mother. Unfortunately, "biological" is the default, so if it does NOT say biological or anything else, then it is a "biological" relationship (i kind of wish that there was a separate "Unknown" type parent child relationship, so that the the explicit "biological" relationship would be shown on the screen the same way "step" or "guardianship" type relationships are shown)

It's unfortunate that the misinterpretations like Adrian mentions happen. If there was no couple relationship between a biological Father and a biological mother, then that fact is documented by NOT creating a couple relationship between them, and anyone looking at the graphics should not automatically assume that the more over-simplified graphic with them as a couple should be used.

Here's an example of an illegitimate child, where unlike Juli's example, the father was know. Also a subsequent adoptive father was known as well:



The problem is that there are places (such as inheritance records) where from the mere fact that a person was conceived by two adults, it is assumed that those two adults had a formal couple-type relationship. However, to represent what the OP asked about (especially in the context of the FSFT theological intents), you would do it in this fashion.

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Randy Rudeen said: Yes, this is regarding my wife. I know the name of the "other man" her biological father and he is deceased. So, is dad who raised her (who never knew). Now that both are deceased, I want to show it accurately for my children. So, to summarize, my wife had a "dad" who raised her and a "biological father" that had a one night encounter with her mom, who is also recently deceased.

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Don M Thomas said: My Great Great Grandmother had two illegitimate children after my Great Great Grandfather died of alcoholism at the closing of the Civil war.

I know for certain that my Great Great Grandmother did not marry these men.

Don't know if FamilySearch condones the placement of NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event in that they will not add NEVER MARRIED to the list.

Use the following to show NEVER MARRIED between your wife's Biological parents.







Try showing your wife's dad as her Step-Father. Show her Biological father as her Biological father, connecting her (your wife) to both your wife's dad - (Step-Father) and her Biological father. (Hope I have that right - if your wife is not deceased you will be able to add her name, but in Production "Family Tree" (others viewing the tree) it will just say "Living.").

Lets pretend your wife is Brenda Kay Moore in the following screenshot. Carmon Eugene Moore would be her Biological father. John Melroy Thomas is her Step-Father or (Dad) since she was raised by her Step-Father.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Don,

In your first 2 images above, you have documented that BOTH couples actually had formal couple relationships (i.e., they are "boxed together"), and in BOTH cases were actually married in a standardized place called "Never Married".

You have documented the geographical location for those two marriages as occurring on the world map at a Latitude of 53.9795, and a longitude of 124.1578 which is several hundred miles North East of Eastern Mongolia. A place from the standards database with the Standard Place name of Never, Amur Oblast, Russia, Soviet Union:



However, because the surnames of Dalton, Barton, and Crow do not really sound much like Russian names, I suspect that you have made a mistake somewhere
:-)

An event is always minimally defined with only 2 fields, a date/time field, and a location field. All of the software in the entire FS website is designed to treat all location fields ONLY as locations and Date/time fields are ONLY handled as dates/times. You cannot just arbitrarily hijack one of these fields and attempt to use it for your own non-date and non-location applications based on your own personal definition. It will ALWAYS have side effects that you do not want.

If you need a free-form field to use for whatever, that is what Notes are for.

But you can't get away with using "Never Married" as a location display name unless you are willing to have the red "!" data error icon there (or, of course if you want to assign the standard place name of Never, Amur Oblast, Russia, Soviet Union as it's geographical location)

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Adrian Bruce said: Just for the record - if I put my stupid hat on and deliberately rush to a conclusion, then I might imagine that the diagram that Jeff inserted immediately above, shows a child who was adopted by a couple and whose birth father is known but whose birth mother is not known.

And I wrote that thinking of it as a ridiculous assumption but it's not. Think medieval lord has a child by unknown servant girl and in a fit of conscience, gives the child to a couple to bring up....

So these are all methods that presumably help to inhibit the creation of theologically inappropriate ordinances - but I still wish that FS would / could provide explicit "Not Married" markers for a couple. Absence of an item should never mean anything other than "Don't (yet) know". And yes, that probably is a sweeping statement.

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Don M Thomas said: I only wanted NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event. Which it is. Most people will not look to see how I obtained the NEVER MARRIAGE. In fact as I remember there were a few of us working on this, and if I remember correctly it was W David Samuelsen who came up with showing NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event this way. I decided to use it because I wanted my Great Great Grandmother showing that she NEVER MARRIED the men she had relationships with. In today trying to help, I mentioned, " Don't know if FamilySearch condones the placement of NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event in that they will not add NEVER MARRIED to the list." In other words leaving it to them if they wanted to use my way of showing NEVER MARRIED.

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Don M Thomas said: Jeff Wiseman - I only wanted NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event. Which it is. Most people will not look to see how I obtained the NEVER MARRIAGE. In fact as I remember there were a few of us working on this, and if I remember correctly it was W David Samuelsen who came up with showing NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event this way. I decided to use it because I wanted my Great Great Grandmother showing that she NEVER MARRIED the men she had relationships with. In today trying to help, I mentioned, " Don't know if FamilySearch condones the placement of NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event in that they will not add NEVER MARRIED to the list." In other words leaving it to them if they wanted to use my way of showing NEVER MARRIED.

I do not see any red flag or exclamation marks.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Adrian,

I understand. "Stupid is as Stupid Does" (sometimes I really love famous quotes)
:-)

There is absolutely nothing you can do when someone "puts (their) stupid hat on and deliberately rushes to a conclusion"--at least not in my mind.

If you don't "read" the document you obviously won't understand it. And if you skim over everything really quickly in order to get things done in a hurry, you will make mistakes.

But when documenting relationships, doing it graphically is very effective. But as in ALL languages (and especially graphic languages), you need to understand the pieces of it to make sense of anything.

The example you gave above as an example of something being missed shouldn't be the case if the person is actually looking at the document. Cecil is only shown as being adopted by the father Joseph. Joseph's wife is Cecil's biological mother, and THAT is documented by the fact that IT DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP! Biological is the default when nothing is shown. That information is left out for some kind of convenience I suppose, but if someone missed that and thought that Birdie was also an adoptive mother, it would be because FS chose not to display biological parent child relationship types, but DOES display all others.

That's kind of why it might be useful to have a formal parent child relationship of Unknown and then if the value assigned is biological, it would actually be displayed. However, biological has been the default for years so I suspect that will not change soon.

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Adrian Bruce said: Don - you have my sympathy. What you illustrate is that people want to make these "not" relationships explicit, and that, because FS doesn't cater for an explicit statement in a useful position, people will misuse items. That will happen.

At the same time, I had to chuckle when I found out that Never is a real place. That ranks with Y, which is a commune in France, and which resulted in Ancestry recording lots of deaths at Y. (GEDCOM data, if incorrectly written or incorrectly read, will decide that a Death took place at Y).

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Indeed. Yes, displaying "biological" would be another good tool to convey sense in diagrams. Hadn't thought of that.

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Jeff Wiseman said: I understand :-) But the reason you have no red flag or exclamation marks is because for each of the couples, you have

- created a legitimate marriage event
- Gave it a display location name of "Never Married"
- Then you Standardized that "Never Married" display location, with the legitimate standardized place name in Russia.

You have correctly documented two different marriages in the same place in Russia (although the events are incomplete as they are missing dates).

If you remove the standard place name that you are using to standardize the display name of "Never Married" with, you will then get the data errors.

Please note that couples that were never married may still have both had a vested interest and made contributions to the family and children. If this is the case, showing them as having a couple relationship (ie., both placed inside the "couple relationship box") without any marriage events is fine. But there is a notes list for that couple relationship where that kind of thing should be recorded if it is important to you.

Unfortunately, because of the weird way that sources, notes, and facts are currently attached to relationships, it is not going to be very visible at all (which I suspect was your main concern from the beginning).

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Jeff Wiseman said: BTW, "Never Married" is not an event. It would be recorded as a Note or a fact.

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Don M Thomas said: I wanted NEVER MARRIED in the Marriage Event, and it will stay the way I have it, unless FamilySearch removes it.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Yea, are we also going to add "Never Divorced", or "Never lived common law" checkboxes? There is a proper way to do this with tagged sources and Notes to relationship vitals that would handle this stuff well, but the current handling of the sources and notes documentation on all relationship types is so far away from this at present, I have no idea how FS would accomplish this.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: As FS has added the needed parent child relationship types in order to effectively handle different types of families, the original default has now been lost in the dust. Even though it is the most significant relationship, it is the only one that now is not explicitly displayed on the family member charts.