Sealings to parent options are inconsistent between siblings

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hi - here are 2 sisters that are shown with two different sets of parent-child relationships. One relationship is to biological parents, the other is to a step-father and biological mother after their mother remarried.

In the ordinance tab, one sister has the option to seal to biological parents only (no sealing option to step-father and mother), while the other has the opposite (sealing to step-father and mother only, no option to be sealed to biological parents).

This does not make any sense. I can't see anything different about the relationships. I expect both sisters to have both sets of sealing to parent options.

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

Family relationships:



Lena Ordinances:



Elsie Ordinances:

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: What you see on the ordinance page is influenced by the Preferred Parent setting:



That blue dot with the check mark determines which set of parents you see. Change to the other parents, and the other set will appear on the ordinance page. This can be set differently for each child.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Thanks Gordon. Changing the preferred parents does change the parents shown on the ordinance page.

However, shouldn't both sets of family relationships be shown all the time on the ordinance page?

I'm pretty sure that all sets of parents used to be shown at all times on the ordinance page, regardless of preferred parents.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: I really have no idea, but I wonder if they have designed it to show just one set of parents because the sealing to parents is an ordinance belonging to the child and the child only needs to be sealed once to one set of parents.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Actually, a child can be sealed to more than one set of parents. The step relationship, adopted relationship, guardian relationship, and even foster relationship are all as valid as the biological relationship.

But it is unusual that you have switch the preferred tree relationship to see the specific SP, when we should be able to see all the SP relationships...

This is especially true when there are merges that changes a previous parental relationship because of a bogus relationship that existed when a SP took place. Or if the relationship was not correct even though a sealing took place.

What is really strange is that all of the SS are shown, but that isn't the case with SP.

Hopefully, this is something that can be corrected or at the least, explained by a FamilySearch representative.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: This really shouldn't affect the ordinances tab for a person. In fact, up until now, I always saw it working appropriately showing ALL ordinances associated with that person. It seems to have been yet another casualty of the "look and feel" updates that have been made recently.

What displays on a status page should not be controlled by some switch hidden elsewhere in the system. The Pedigree type charts is a bit of an exception since it would be so difficult to show everything at the same time, But there is loads of room in the ordinances tab for a person.

This behavior hides very pertinent data from the view in a rather unintuitive fashion now..

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Jeff:  I have spoken with the engineering manager on this. Gordon is right it is tied to the preference selected. The reason being is that we don't want to make it seem like they need to be sealed to both. Only one, and it doesn't matter which one, so it seemed reasonable to go with the preferred.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hi Jim - thanks for looking into this and thank you for the response!

I am surprised though with the statement that it doesn't matter what sets of parents someone is sealed to. Who someone is sealed to seems like it would be very important to the involved parties! I thought that in the case of vicarious sealings, that all of the relationships should be sealed and it would get sorted out properly in the future.

Maybe I'm missing something. Is there some doctrinal basis or policy that you can refer me to for more information?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Thank's Jim. I can certainly buy the fact that it was intentionally designed that way for that given reason.

I'm not sure I agree completely with the reason though :-) From a consistency standpoint, if I want to see all the ordinances associated with someone, intuitively, all I should need to do is to go to the ordinances tab for their record. But in this case, there is no guarantee that they will all be there. And this inconsistency is confusing just as the OP Jeff_Luke has observed. If there *IS* invisible ordinances, then the only way to make them magically appear is to go to a different web page and flip a switch which is not even obviously related to them.

The reason being is that we don't want to make it seem like they need to be sealed to both

If that is the case though, Tom's observation does bear consideration:

What is really strange is that all of the SS are shown, but that isn't the case with SP

So you have to ask, why then if a women was married to 3 different husbands over the course of her life, that all 3 of those SS ordinances are simultaneously shown in her ordinances tab in spite of the "Preferred" Couple settings? Why aren't they hidden as well?

So if you "don't want to make it seem like she needs to be sealed to all three (only one, and it doesn't matter which one)", is this not the same type of situation?

It seems to me that it is more important for the ordinances tab for a person record to show all the ordinances related to that person. Period. And in the same way that all three SS ordinances for the woman in my example above, are typically ALL performed (let them work the detail out in the eternities), why wouldn't you SP a child to all parents of any family groups that they belonged to while alive? I've always had that approach to usually do it all. Cover all of the bases/ordinances that we can here, and let the details be sorted out later by those with authority and "in the know".

If this is an inappropriate approach, then someone needs to quote some direction for me, because it has always seemed appropriate in the work I've done.

I am not criticizing the reasoning for the currently chosen design, but I did want to point out that the implementation itself seems to be unintuitive, confusing, and inconsistent with how all the other relationship type ordinances are handled in the ordinances tab. I personally would prefer to see all ordinances for a person at a glance instead of needing to go off flipping switches elsewhere in order to reveal hidden ordinance data in the tab.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Jeff_Luke, this is something that I'm growing to understand better over time. These are all "saving ordinances" as taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The most important thing is that they are performed for and accepted by the individuals that they apply to. It doesn't matter who does the work.

Who someone is sealed to seems like it would be very important to the involved parties

It is. But we are talking about people who are no longer with us! We can't get their opinion on the situation. In fact, we NEVER really fully understand their "situation" because we are totally limited by the few sources, that we can find about them. And even if we could, we are still not in the position to judge which ordinances should and should not be done.

People, relationships, and circumstances can all change over time. Given a person who only lived with their biological parents for 6 years of their life, and then with an adoptive family for the rest of their life, which parents should they be sealed to? Since we can't judge here, and shouldn't apply limiting judgements either, I would do both SPs. It's easier and all bases have been covered.

Jim has indicated that from his engineering manager ,"they don't want to make it seem like they need to be sealed to both". And yet in my personal opinion, I would usually do both. So putting designs in the system to sort of mitigate me from doing those types of things confuses me a bit (but that certainly doesn't make me RIGHT about these things)

If doing such multiple SP ordinances is to be discouraged, I would really like to see some quotes and directives from the brethren on this. Otherwise, I'm still inclined to just do them all, in which case having all the ordinances for a person not simultaneously visible on their ordinances tab would be moot.

I also had one last thought on this but is theologically oriented and thus not appropriate in this forum. I'll send you message via the FS messaging feature.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Nit-picky me... All four should be all five ordinances... B, C, I, E, and SP.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Anyway, what is particularly unnerving is that when I check "My Relationship" to a person, the relationship may flow through my biological parents or my step-mother (who married my father when I was sixteen and still living at home).

That seems to be unaffected by any Preferred setting. But I have also set myself up as a child in the second marriage with a step-relationship to the "mother".

Normally, we would not seal a divorced couple together, but that happened with one of my ancestral lines. I was in the training zone when I was putting together that part of the family. My ancestor was female and her first marriage was dissolved by divorce without producing any children.

Her second marriage produced the ancestral line down to me and so she had been sealed to her second husband. LDS theology says that a woman cannot be sealed to more than one man, although that practice has varied over the years. So normally, I would not seal her first husband to her. However, both my trainer and I felt a strong impulse to have him sealed to her and so we went ahead with the sealing. In putting together his record, he had joined the Church but was unmarried.

We don't know what happens in the hereafter, but sometimes we get glimpses through personal feelings (revelation). The Church has modified its policy with regard to sealing divorced couples and there are no restrictions like there once were.

We simply do not know, so my feeling is to go with the whisperings of the spirit in this regard.