What happens to Living individuals in my tree when I die

Sheryl Neal Slaughter

I previously asked a question of FamilySearch Help about what happens to Living individuals in my tree when I die. I was told that my account would be closed and that they would disappear.

Since then, I have heard that they don't disappear but are released as deceased 110 years after their birth date.

Can someone please clarify?

Thanks!

Sheryl Neal Slaughter

Anitra Whittle

Hello Shery,

Great question.

When children obtain a FamilySearch Family Tree account, they can not merge their living account with the living self person that their parent has entered. The child has to add the names of their living parents, grand parents, etc; then add the names of their deceased relatives to open up their tree. If they add a living person, like parent, they will have a new Person ID, seperate from their living parent's Person ID on the living parents' tree.

See: https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-add-living-relatives-to-a-person-in-family-tree

Here is what happens to the accounts of deceased users;

View As:                                         

Public

When we receive proof of a user's death, we disable accounts of deceased users.

• Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: The account is disabled after a local clerk adds the death information to the membership record.
• Public users: A living person user can submit proof of death to FamilySearch Support , and the account will be disabled.

Surviving family members cannot inherit or gain access to the disabled account.

For questions, please contact FamilySearch Support . 

Regarding Memories:

When a user passes away, if FamilySearch knows about the death, the system locks the account. All Memories items that the individual contributed remain in our Family Tree database.

This is also true of tags. Others can still see these tagged items but cannot edit them. 

If the user has added private memories, those memories are not made public. The system is set to keep private any memories designated by a contributor as private.

What @Cindy Hecker posted is true. "Yes when you are deceased your account is disabled. That is true. But there is no set time as to when anything or anyone in your private living space will be released. They are still talking about and discussing it but no plan is in place. No one is automatically marked deceased at 110 years of age. "

How to use the Help Center:

1. Click on the question mark on the upper right of the page.
2. Select Help Center from the drop down.
3. Put your question if the search box and enter.
4. You can put different wording in the search box if you don't get the answer you like.

Let us know if this is helpful.

Anitra, Group Leader

JeffWiseman

For what it is worth, for many years the whole intent of these databases were specifically for setting up and tracking names for their temple work. The initial FamilySearch FamilyTree was focused primarily on reducing all of the duplicate temple work that was happening.

As you can see the whole intention of these databases originally was 99.999% about DECEASED INDIVIDUALS!

The ability to add immediate (and now extended family) is a new idea that is just evolving. The brethren do seem very supportive of this newer concept of supporting the documenting of living families as well, so things will certainly be continuing to evolve in that direction, but it is a different concept from before.

Shannon Potter Wilcox

@Sheryl Neal Slaughter I have listed my children on FamilySearch. I was told by my Family History Consultant that as they go on to FamilySearch and make their own accounts, they will have to merge both the one they make and the one I made. My understanding is that our accounts don't disappear, but after a couple of months, they will be seen where now they are not because we are alive.

Cindy Hecker

Ron Tanner who is a project manager familysearch addresses this very question in his Q&A session he holds 2x a month on his FB page/Youtube channel Family History Ron. He asnwered this Question on April 8th during his live and you can watch that if you look for it to here his answer and he knows.

There is not a clear system in place which is why you are getting conflicting information. Yes when you are deceased your account is disabled. That is true. But there is no set time as to when anything or anyone in your private living space will be released. They are still talking about and discussing it but no plan is in place. No one is automatically marked deceased at 110 years of age. The 110 year rule is for entering profiles into FamilySearch and for temple work.

Hope this helps some,

Cindy Hecker

Sheryl Neal Slaughter

Thanks. I will await an official response. In the meantime, I have removed all living individuals I was able to remove from my tree and stopped adding new living individuals.

Sheryl Neal Slaughter

What I am most concerned about is wasting effort adding large numbers of living individuals to my tree with all the information but a death date and then losing all that effort when I die. I had many, many individuals in my tree in that condition.

I am thinking how sad it is that if I pass all my family history research to my daughter, she won't even be able to correct any of my memories or sources if a mistake is found, or continue adding death dates as my living individuals die.

It almost tempts me to cheat the system and create two accounts--1 LDS and 1 not. I could reserve all my ordinances in the LDS account and enter all my Family Tree information in the non-LDS account. Then, when I die my family will have my login for the non-LDS account and can keep it active to make corrections, continue adding death dates, or answering questions from other users who reach out on my contributions for as long as they want.

This is a very sad situation and is making me rethink putting everything I have into Family Tree.

Anitra Whittle

Hello Sheryl,

I know. I have a few things I thought it might be good to put in Memories. They are about living children, so I didn't tag them because they could have been found through Google Search. :(

I'm not too sure what to do with the living family memories now. as the memories will be locked when I die.

Unfortunately we are unable to have two accounts in Family Tree. It just doesn't work. Either non-member or member account will be locked when we pass. So. . . .

It is a conundrum indeed. Since you brought this up and I've looked into it, I'm thinking I will put my living information and memories into a desktop program, like Legacy, RootsMagic, or the like. Also I will put the desktop tree on a USB with the memories and family tree from the desktop program.

I can download a GEDCOM from Ancestry.com and import it into the desktop program. And begin from there.

It is indeed a unfortunate situation. One I hope FamilySearch will be able to find a cure for.

Thank you for your input.

Did I mention that you can go to the bottom of the page, click on Feedback, and express your feelings about locking the memories when we die. Use the Report A Problem reply.

Thank you.

Anitra, Group Leader

Bill Broadbent

Hi Anitra,

Sadly, I learned about this problem in FS last year after having entered hundreds of living relatives (2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins).

I then decided to use Ancestry as the repository of my living relatives in a private tree. The tree is easily shared with other family members so everyone can see the tree and memories (photos and documents - Ancestry doesn't support audio).

Further, I can pass on my Ancestry log-in credentials to my children when I die; there is no issue with the Ancestry account being locked. They can relatively easily move the tree to one of their accounts if they want (memories must be moved one by one). As living people pass away, it will be fairly easy for my heirs to add death dates in the Ancestry tree and then copy the person to FS using the link.

I included a few generations of deceased folks in the Ancestry tree to tie all of the living folks together. I focus on FS for deceased people and Ancestry for living people. I often find records in Ancestry for deceased people that are not on FS and can easily move the source to FS using the link.

It was fairly easy to create the Ancestry tree. I went back a few generations in FS and downloaded the descendants for each ancestor, then merged the trees, and uploaded to Ancestry. This included all of the living folks I had entered into FS (no memories).

It is very easy to find the deceased parents in FS of a living person in Ancestry by using the link in Ancestry.

At this point, this method is working well. If FS develops some better method for living relatives, I may switch back.

Thanks!

Bill

MDRMT

@Sheryl Neal Slaughter

Thank you for posting this question here in Community for all of us to learn and help each other.

Your questions about living persons showing in your Family Tree and what happens after you die have been asked by a lot of us. While FamilySearch does disable accounts of deceased persons, and we do not provide information about living persons on your tree, you may still want to capture first-hand details about your living relatives. This is one reason we recommend that each FamilySearch account holder keeps his/her tree in a third-party software program. That will allow you to privately include any details you choose, have strict control over what goes in or gets changed, and you can share it with any you choose at any time.

The following link may be helpful in finding our "Solutions Gallery".

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-find-partner-products

We hope this has been helpful. Best of success in your family history efforts.