Just wondering when is a living person considered decesed ??
I looked this question above up and this was the answer I got.
FamilySearch displays a living person as dead if a user manually changes their status to "deceased" or adds any text to the death/burial fields , as the system treats these as verification of death. It does not automatically mark people as deceased based on age, though it often treats individuals born 110+ years ago as deceased.
So is 110 years the time after entry that the person is considered decesed. Im also wondering if the date of birth is put in, say 1977 it openes up the profile after 110 years after that.
Just wondering.
Comments
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Hello @ColinM0288,
A person is considered deceased on the date they died, even if it was today.
See the following:
Yes, a person who died today can be entered into the FamilySearch Family Tree immediately. If they were already in your private, "living" space, you can update their status to "deceased". If they were not in the tree, you can add them as a new record by marking them as deceased. Key details for entering a recently deceased person:Update Status:If the person was previously entered as "living," go to their profile, edit the vital information, and change the status to "deceased" by adding the death date.Public Visibility:Once marked as deceased, the profile becomes public and visible to other users.Adding New Records:If adding them for the first time, you must enter their first/last name, sex, and mark them as "deceased".Data Accuracy:Ensure you have accurate,, and preferably, verified information for the death record, as this information is shared publicly.Temple Ordinances:ForThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members, you must generally wait for a period following the death to request ordinances.
Entering them immediately allows for the preservation of memories, such as obituaries and photos, to be added to the shared tree.0 -
Here is the official language about determining when a person is considered deceased: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-does-family-tree-determine-whether-a-person-is-living-or-deceased
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Im sorry but this doesnt really answer the question. Its writen in an obtuse way. And actually I think? says a living person may never be listed as dead automatically.
EG. FamilySearch does not automatically mark an individual as deceased when the first rule no longer applies.
With great respect.
Regards
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I feel the link provided by @darlog provides an adequate response to your question and, personally, don't find it in any way obtuse.
(1) Unless you have evidence a person born under 110 years ago has died, you apply a Living status.
(2) Once the 110 years from birth has passed, there is no automatic mechanism that changes the status to Deceased, but an individual user can feel free to change the status themself.
In line with this, and other details in the linked article, I keep a regular watch on the (admittedly few) individuals I have added to Family Tree with a Living status: ready to change their status to Deceased once I am able to find (and input) details of their death, or after 110 years have passed since their birth - regardless of whether (or not) I can find proof of their death.
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You may be right @darlog and Mr Paul W.
But I actually find the way YOU have stated it a little more clear. But I would also wish the statement to really say. "Living people will never be passed over to decesed at any time automatically." which I think that is what it is saying. I recognize Mr Paul W. that this is semantics, I do accept that and it is not my plan to challenge this policy, just to understand it clearly. It will however changed the way I do things a little. For example I have put a few pictures and facts in a profile for myself. Birth a few facts a picture or two. It seems this will be all gone since, I will not be here to mark myself as dead.
Again I say all these things with respect and really just trying to understand, which may be more about my miss understanding and amateur/padantic/OCD nature than anything else.
Regards
Thank you for the answers.
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@ColinM0288 Hi Colin - As you can tell from the comments and what you have read, there seems to be some confusion around getting a person marked deceased. On your last comment, you also mentioned your own profile which needs some further explanation.
When you established your Family Search account, you filled out your own living profile. Since that time, you have added additional profiles. When you add new profile to Family Search, you should add them as living UNLESS ONE of following is true.
1- You have proof of death
2- Person born more than 110 Years ago.
3- Person was married more than 95 years ago.
4- Person has a child born more that 95 years ago.
If any of these statements are true, marked the person as deceased
If none of the statements are true, mark the person as living.
Remember, you are the only one that can see the living profiles you have entered. Once you have entered them as living, they remain as living. There is no automatic movement from living to deceased. As indicated by Paul W. you can set up to periodically check these living profiles. Once one of above conditions become true, you can mark the profile as deceased, and it becomes public. Again, there is no automatic movement to deceased.
With respect to your own personal living profile, as you correctly surmised, there is no one to mark it deceased. But there are provisions to get it marked deceased. For those who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, this is handled through the membership department of the church. For those that are not member of the church, the death needs to be reported by contacting Family Search and supplying proof of death. I would suggest arrangements be made for a family member or friend to report the death. Two things will happen. Your living profile will be marked deceased and become public. This includes memories and sources. Secondly you Family Search Account will be closed. I think it is very appropriate for you a build out your legacy with memories and photos with arrangements to have your profile marked deceased. Hope this helps. I have attached an article which explains in more detail.
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@Wayland K Adams wrote 'There is no automatic movement from living to deceased….' . [Edited…] As a general question it makes me wonder what purpose is really served by creating a PID for a living person…. Guess it could be helpful to find related Sources for someone that is deceased. I think the day will come in a generation or two that FamilySearch will have some sort of 'scrub' of the PIDs to find those that are duplicates and also should be marked as deceased
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Didn't mean to say create a new PID if you already have one. You just create the PID once to begin with. If that is marked living. it will remain as living until you manually change it to deceased, no automatic movement. Don't create a new PID, just mark the existing one as deceased
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Thank you for your responses.
Before anything else, I want to emphasize that this is an intellectual conversation. Online discussions can easily be misinterpreted when we can’t see each other’s expressions. At times it might seem like I’m trying to be clever (my wife would certainly question that!) or stir up trouble, but that’s not my intention. I’ve recommended FamilySearch to many people and will continue to do so. I hope that’s understood.
My goal is simply to understand the system better—and perhaps even help improve it. I appreciate that you’re willing to let me poke at things and ask questions.
To be clear, I’m not confused about the policies regarding living vs. deceased individuals—funny as that sounds—and I’m not confused about how to apply them. That part has always been straightforward. Wayland K. Adams, I agree that your explanation (points 1–4) is clearer and easier to read, much like Mr. Paul W.’s. But that wasn’t really the point of contention.
My concerns are more about the lack of automatic nature of moving peopole to decesed. My comments are simply thoughts to consider, even though I’m sure this topic has already been thoroughly discussed by those involved. Still, I find the current approach—not automatically transitioning individuals to “deceased” after an appropriate amount of time—less than ideal, especially given your goals. That’s just my opinion.
Take my own profile as an example. The person who knows the most about me is… me. And I know the most about my immediate family—my wife, my brothers, and so on. I have all the information anyone would need, including photos. I understand why the Church wants to track the geneolgies of people, and the process mentioned for members makes sense. We are lucky you are out there. But what percentage of users aren’t members? I genuinely don’t know.
Sure, I could give my password to a friend so they can log in someday and mark me as deceased, but that’s asking a lot. Will they remember in 5, 10, or 20 years? Will they even still be around—or care? After all, “old Uncle Fred” will be gone. This is not really a practical aproach. Also a relative could eventually add me, but the information I personally entered wouldn’t carry over, since it would be a new profile.
I think of the hours and hours and hours I have spend looking for things. Some little morsale of data. Imagine how easy it would be if that info was already there. Now I know this is a modern issue. eg. in 1945 the web side did not exist. So we are realy talking about he future.
You mentioned a possible future “scrub,” which I took to mean that living profiles might eventually be transitioned to deceased. But that sounded more hypothetical than certain—an “if pigs could fly” kind of scenario.
Given that, it does seem questionable to allow living individuals to be entered at all if there’s no firm, known policy for eventually transitioning them. That feels unfortunate. The only practical justification I can see is that it helps me untangle family relationships.
Those are my thoughts, and I appreciate the chance to share them. I hope I’ve represented both your views and mine accurately in a world where truth often feels slippery. On a humorous note, I keep thinking, “I’ve never fought so hard to be declared dead—what’s wrong with me?”
A SUGGESTION THAT MIGHT MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY
I’d like to propose one additional option for your consideration—though I’m sure it has already come up in one of your database meetings (weekly? monthly?). When someone creates an account, include an optional checkbox that says something like:
“Allow FamilySearch to close my account and mark me as deceased after 120 years.”
Any legal details could be covered in the standard “Terms and Conditions” that no one reads anyway.
To conclude, I’ll consider this topic closed—unless, of course, you reply with, “Hey, that’s a good idea, and we’ll implement it in version x.y.z.” In that case, I’ll print it out and proudly show my wife: “See? I’m not always a troublemaker!”
Thank you again for your website and for the oportunity have a civil discussion, something we need more of.
Regards
And a happy belated Robbie Burns Day to all.
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Hi Colin Thanks for the reply. There are a couple of things I should clear up. I understand about your goal, and I am fine with that. Here are a couple of things
1- First of all, my goal has just been to explain how this part of family search works. It was not and is not trying to defend Family Search. I agree with what you are saying about a more automated transition to deceased. I have made similar suggestions right from the beginning of Family Search back in 2012.
2- When you are conversing with people on Family Search Community, you are conversing with volunteers for the most part. I am a volunteer. Some are members the church and other are not. As such, we really don't have a forum different than what you have for suggesting changes. The best avenue for you to make suggestions is on the right-hand side of the home page under suggest an idea. I would suggest you go there and make any and all suggestions. Your suggestion to have a statement authorizing FS to mark you as deceased at some trigger point is a good one. Please make that.
3- You mentioned about giving your password to someone and having them mark you as deceased. Family Search never recommends that you give your password to someone else. Aside from that, your suggestion won't work anyway. An account holder, whether yourself or someone signed in as you are not allowed to set yourself as deceased. The reason for this is the process is more complicated that just adding a death date. It involves getting all the memories and other items ready for the account to be closed. The only way to do this, at present, is to notify family search along with proof of death and they will make the changes. Hopefully at some point, this can be more automated.
4. You mentioned about ending this conversation. That would be fine or I am happy to continue. We could also have a phone conversation if you would rather. Either option is fine with me. I put my phone number in a private message. Look for the red dot at the upper right.
Take care
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@ColinM0288 A couple of clarifications:
You proposed "Sure, I could give my password to a friend so they can log in someday and mark me as deceased, but that’s asking a lot." That's actually not at all possible currently. The Tree profile associated with your user account is special in ways that most users are not aware of. You simply are not allowed to mark it as deceased (if you try, you'll see an error message when you try to save the updated Death vital conclusion, and your profile will still be living). And of course, that applies to anyone who logs in as you after you die. So any suggestions along these lines won't work.
That previous point raises a point that we need to be very clear on when we are talking about transitioning living profiles to deceased: there is a very significant difference between changing the special profile associated with an account, as opposed to all the living profiles that a user has created. Sometimes people are sloppy in conflating these two very distinct scenarios. The former could only happen in conjunction with a verifiable declaration that the user is deceased, the closing of the account, and some other necessary actions. The latter could happen in conjunction with the closing of a user account upon the user's death, but there are clearly many other factors to consider for individual profiles.
Any marking of individual living profiles as deceased would need to be done with care. For example, I might have a living profile for my sister. Suppose she was born in 1970. But as I am editing her profile, I make a typo (as I am sadly wont to do) and I enter it as 1870. I would certainly not want the system to trust that value immediately, assume she is over 150 years old, and mark her deceased. But if such marking of people as deceased is not immediate, when could it happen? And in conjunction with the previous discussion, suppose I saved her birth year as 1870, don't notice it, then die the next day. When my account is closed, and if there were an automatic mechanism to mark all my living profiles as deceased if they are over 120 years old, might it be surprising to my still-living sister to discover a deceased profile in her name?
There are many other potential complications. I could get on board with your proposal to mark a user's profile deceased when they turn 120, if they have given explicit permission for that to be done. Other triggers earlier than the 120-year mark are conceivable if relatives can provide reliable documentation of the user's death. But I am wary of broadening this to include other living profiles that may not have reliable birthdates.
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@Alan E. Brown I wonder if it would work better if /every/ user had a base FGT, with only that individual in it to start with, instead of their private Living tree. It would give them the same functionality, but another user would be easily given access, either by the individual, or, post death/incapacity, an executor etc. could be given access by Support. I also think that the dual purpose that you clarify for a user's 'root' profile is a mistake and that the 'administrative' element of it should be handled separately from the in-the-Tree, i.e. ordinary profile, element. (Apart from anything else, not all FS users necessarily want to do any work in the Tree, they may just want to look at Records etc.)
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@Wayland K Adams I appreciate your notes . I’ve been around long enough to know how easily online discussions can be misinterpreted as mean‑spirited. That’s why I tend to go overboard trying to make sure I don’t give that impression. Thank you for recognizing that. I also forget, at times, that everyone here is a volunteer. I’m sometimes perceived as rude simply because I ask a lot of questions and keep pressing when something doesn’t make sense to me. I ask without prejudice, as a lawyer might say. I think I’m being logical, but of course, we all think that about ourselves. People can be quick to judge.
Your point is well taken that you’re explaining the policy, not defending it. It’s like when I go into a store with a complaint, I always start with, “I know you’re just the employee doing your job, so please don’t take this personally, but here’s the issue…”
As for your suggestion about using the “Suggestions” link on the right-hand side, that may be the route I take. Surely someone reads these threads, it would be irresponsible not to and surely these issues have been thought through already. I admit I’m a bit of a defeatist; I have little faith that any organization will change based on my comments. It hasn’t happened yet. And in my experience, the larger and more religious the organization, the less likely they are to listen to public feedback. Just my opinion. Still, I may leave a comment as you suggested. In military language, there’s something called “faint hope.”
@Alan E . Brown Your point is well taken. Yes, we all mistype dates sometimes, and I’m not sure how to fix that. There could be checks, I suppose. It does sadden me that the information I’ve entered about myself may never be seen. I sometimes think of my grandchildren, maybe when they’re old like me, they’ll want to know something about their old grandpa or grandma. It would be nice if they could find a few pictures and comments. But as you say, there are probably complications I haven’t considered. Thank you for your thoughts.
@MandyShaw1 I ’m not sure what a “base FGT” is, but thank you for your contributions. You have more knowledge than me on these things. I do think this database is enormous, and making changes must be incredibly difficult.
Regards to all, and thank you for your comments.🙂
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A FGT is a Family Group Tree. A 'base' FGT is not a thing, just part of the suggestion I was making in my comment.
If you do Suggest an Idea, it would be great if you could post a copy here as that is the only way other Community members are able to avoid duplication and/or discuss submitted Ideas. (The Suggest an Idea function squirrels Ideas away where no-one here can see them, even the submitter.)
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Hey thanks for that.
I will do as you have suggested. My only update, and its a matter of opinion based on experience is that multiple prods from the community motivate people to do something. What I mean by this is when I was working with software engeneers and I would go to them and say hey can we add this option, we have had a request for it. Their usual response was, how many people want this. Based on my response they would either care or not care. Its a prety cold industry, Some people I worked with made great arguments for changes to Software. We need a drop box here or there or why dont we do this. Generally the willingness to make those changes which can take weeks or longer to change was based on customer feedback and requests. One or two aint going to convince anyone. Anyway just my thoughts.
Regards
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It is a pity that we can no longer upvote/downvote submitted Ideas, as used to be possible.
I did submit an Idea
requesting changes to many aspects of the new Ideas process, which I frankly consider dysfunctional, but no joy.
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Nicely done and true regarding upvotes. I think everybody gets nervous particularly large organizations. With any critisism. Good natured and helpfull as it is.
Your points are good. Mine will not be as carfully crafted.
Thanks.
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I wonder if FS counts "Likes."
@ColinM0288, I definitely like your idea of automatically marking a person as deceased 120 years after their birthdate!
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@CherylMillerBlack
Thank you for your comments. I’m just a two‑star general, but I appreciate the kind words.I have a rather convoluted comment, if I may.
While I was exploring the site today, I came across this page:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/discovery/recordme/Error
It’s the “Everyone has stories. What are yours?” section.It made me wonder when, or if, this information will ever be made public. Some of the questions they ask, like “Tell us about a leadership role you had” or “What is your best attribute?”, seem unusual if the responses are never shared. FamilySearch isn’t really a self‑help site, so it feels like a strange place for private reflections that no one will ever see. If the information isn’t eventually made public, it seems like a bit of a wasted effort, even if it might be a decent psychological exercise. Im not sure thats FS purpose? I mean the question are nice, and quite frankly I would like to know what my grandfather felt his best attribue was. Under this page at the bottom is: “Inspiring people everywhere to connect with their family across generations.” Does this mean it will be made public at some time, if that is their stated goal
So tieing back to our original point: that is — after an appropriate amount of time, profiles should be opened. Otherwise, it doesn’t fully support their stated goal — “Inspiring people everywhere to connect with their family across generations.” Keeping everything locked down makes that connection harder, not easier.
I’ve also been thinking about @Alan E . Brown’s thoughtfull comments about incorrect dates being entered — for example, typing 1867 instead of 1967, which could make someone appear deceased when they’re not. It’s a fair concern. But honestly, I’ve done the same thing myself: typing 18 instead of 19 when I’m deep in 1800s records. Mistakes happen either way. It feels inconsistent to be extremely strict in one scenario but not the other.
Anyway, I’ll try to put something together for the suggestion board. I just don’t want to be known as the grim reaper who accidentally kills people off prematurely.😊
Many warmish regards to the contributers.
It's Minus 16C or 3.2F for others, and sunny. Got my taps running so the water does not freeze.
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So I submitted my thoughts. I don't expect they are written very well. I think the important thing is simply to ask the question. They will take it from there. Unfortunately I had written 3800 words then saw there was a limit. So I had to cut it down. Hopefully still understandable, I had to Eliminate some of the pros and cons you all have mentioned. But again. They really are not interested in the bulk of what a person says they are only focused on the theme. To give it either a thumbs up or down to pursue.
——————————-I’ve noticed that there doesn’t seem to be a clear policy on automatically moving a person’s profile from “Living” to “Deceased” after an appropriate amount of time. Look at the earlier comments I posted for additional background.
There are really two different situations to think about:
1. My Personal ProfileInformation pictures about me.
2. Profiles of RelativesBasically anybody that is not me.
The Problem: Personal Profiles
There’s no definitive plan for what happens to all the information I’ve added to my personal profile once I’m gone. If it stays permanently hidden.
Suggestion: Personal Profile
Why not allow users to check a box when creating their account for the first time or even later, that says their personal profile information can be made public after 120 years? People could opt in or out. You could even display a small gold seal indicating that the profile was created by the person themselves. It seems reasonable that I should be able to pass my own history on to future generations.
Suggestion: Relatives’ Profiles
A similar option could apply to relatives. For example, if I enter my child’s birth date, then after 110 years from that date, the profile could automatically become public and the connections to me—again, only if I’ve given permission.
The idea that releasing this information after more than a century would violate privacy seems unlikely.
The Advantages
The benefits seem obvious: more accurate information, easier family connections, and a stronger alignment with FamilySearch’s mission—“Inspiring people everywhere to connect with their family across generations.” This approach would significantly enhance that goal.
Thaks you.
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@ColinM0288 Thank you for clearly defining your suggestion and associated thoughts. Please know all suggestions are reviewed, and although not all are responded to, many are used to enhance the FamilySearch experience. Keep up the good work
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