Search for Living Relatives

LegacyUser

Kevin Perez said: Dear Representative,

I am having difficulty using the search feature for my deceased relatives. I am hoping, instead to search for Dad (Richard Perez). He is amongst the living, and I am not sure how to search for him given this.

My suggestion is to enable searching for the living as well as the dead. This way I can find his father and mother a little bit easier.

Thank you,

Kevin

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: That's just not how it goes. Sorry.

LegacyUser

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.

Privacy laws prevail with regard to people who are in the massive tree. A living person will appear only for the person who entered the record.

As far as historical records, they mainly deal with deceased persons. In some instances, if a record does not comply with local (to the record) jurisdictional laws, the entire image set may not be available for searching, or if it is, for viewing..

There are internet searches that can help. I tend to use ZabaSearch (https://www.zabasearch.com/) when I am checking to see if someone is still living. The same site is a little better than White Pages (https://www.whitepages.com/) and both can be used to see who is calling from a telephone number that is identified by your caller ID. Keep in mind, though that criminals typically spoof local numbers (to you) to try to trick you into answering your telephone. There is a movement to have telephone companies identify spoofed numbers and block them, but with the current coronavirus, that effort may have been set to one side. All of this applies to the United States -- there may be similar efforts and features with respect to other countries.

LegacyUser

Paul said: There is a way to view a list of Living persons in Family Tree. But, for the privacy reasons mentioned, it only applies to those IDs YOU have created. Add them all to your "watch list" (click on "Watch" on the Person page of each of your "living"), then go to "Lists" / "People I'm Watching" and type "living" in the Filter box.

LegacyUser

Paul said: UPDATE

I'm sorry, but it appears the above no longer applies. If you were fortunate enough to put living individuals on your watch list when this WAS possible (some time ago) they can still be viewed using the Filter box, as described. (I find I can still view 3 such IDs via my watch list.) However, it appears if you create a new ID for a living person NOW you are no longer able to add them to your watch list.

Incidentally, in contrast, I believe at one time you could not add sources to living individuals, whereas now you can.

LegacyUser

S. said: Due to some many Privacy laws I am very sorry I don't think that will happen.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Kevin,

Depending on a lot of different things, it is sometimes possible to find records on people that are still alive. For example, in the US, anyone that was around in 1940 could show up on the 1940 Census (later censuses have not yet been released).

Also, I don't know if you are aware that there are 2 general types of search in FS. One is where you search the family tree for records that others have placed there already. This can be done with the "Search -- Family Tree" functions. The other type of database that you can search is for historic records (things like marriage certificates, birth records, etc.). These can be done using the "Search -- Records" or the "Search -- Catalog" functions.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Looks like I misunderstood Kevin's problem and he will better appreciate your response, Jeff!