Couple Relationship dropdown menu.
Would it be possible to add a "NOT MARRIED" or "NO COUPLE RELATIONSHIP" to the drop down menu in the "Events" in Couple Relationship. There are times when a baby has been conceived, but not in any ongoing relationship. It is inappropriate to have them listed as married, lived together, common law, annulment or divorced.
Answers
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@vdrenn But that isn't an Event (Marriage or Divorce), more the absence of an Event. You can put children in place, with relevant Child/Parents Relationships, without creating a Couple Relationship, does that help?
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@vdrenn On FamilySearch, when parents of a child are not married, you can accurately document this by setting their couple relationship to “never married,” “other,” or by deleting the couple relationship while keeping both parents linked to the child. You can edit parents who are listed as married and change the status to never married, lived together or common law. You can also remove the couple relationship. This keeps both people listed as parents of the child without implying that they were married. It’s always a good idea to use the notes to explain the situation and make things more clear to other researchers. Please let us know if you need more help with this.
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Re "deleting the couple relationship while keeping both parents linked to the child."
The problem with this advice (which is, as far as I know, the best possible action) is that this is, in a very real sense, something that you do in a computer system and it's not wholly clear what this means for the real life couple.
Was there no ongoing relationship in real life? Or does it mean that we don't know what their relationship was, which isn't the same thing.
A further point about a deleted relationship is that the user interface encourages you to put events etc back in!
We desperately need a positive indication of no real-life relationship, such as that suggested by @vdrenn
Yes, such an indication would be an attribute of the computer relationship, rather than an event, but that's a minor detail.
There might be room for a couple of such indicators - one night stands could be distinguished from couples who lived together informally for a few months only (which is different again from the infamous term "Common Law"). Or you might contend (with some justification) that we can never distinguish such states at this distance in time.
Whatever, a positive indication is needed, I believe.
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@MandyShaw1 You raise a good point that it doesn't really make sense to put the absence of an event in the list of events.
@betsy123 Some of your advice is impossible. There is no way of "setting their couple relationship to 'never married,' 'other'" as you suggested — options for "never married" or "other" simply do not exist. The rest of your advice is good.
@Adrian Bruce1 I agree with most of your points. Two clarifications:
- "Was there no ongoing relationship in real life? Or does it mean that we don't know what their relationship was, which isn't the same thing." One should certainly only delete the couple relationship in Family Tree if there is evidence that there was indeed no couple relationship in real life. I would never delete it if we simply don't know.
- "A further point about a deleted relationship is that the user interface encourages you to put events etc back in!" I don't see any evidence of this. First of all, if the couple relationship has been deleted there is no way to add events, so there is certainly no encouragement to put events back in. When a couple relationship has been deleted, I suppose one could argue that the presence of the Add Couple Relationship button is "encouragement" to add the relationship back. But I disagree with that. There are various Delete buttons strewn throughout the user interface to allow us to delete events, alternate names, or even profiles. But the presence of those Delete buttons is not encouragement to delete an item, but rather simply presenting an option if we need to use it. The Add Couple Relationship button is similar.
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@Alan E Brown said "One should certainly only delete the couple relationship in Family Tree if there is evidence that there was indeed no couple relationship in real life. I would never delete it if we simply don't know." I would totally agree with you - but I'm not sure whether, in the absence of explicit instructions, everyone else would agree with us.
"When a couple relationship has been deleted, I suppose one could argue that the presence of the Add Couple Relationship button is "encouragement" to add the relationship back.". Yes - that's what I was thinking of, thanks. I think that your statement that this is "simply presenting an option if we need to use it" is eminently logical. But I do get slightly worried that some will treat the button as an encouragement rather than an option. Hence my desire for belt-and-braces explicitness.
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