How to Put a Divorce in a Family Tree

Non-traditional family trees are not uncommon. Although many of us wish for a traditional family, divorce, death, out-of-spousal relationship births and other circumstances happen to many families. No matter how you feel well-nigh what happened or how you lot feel about the people involved in these events, they belong in your family tree. Your step family genealogy should exist recorded to accurately tell your family's story.

In this series, you will learn how to record these complex family situations clearly in your family tree. In this post, you will learn near recording step family unit genealogy and divorce events in your Ancestry.com Tree.

The basic concepts for recording non-traditional family trees are the same in most genealogy programs. In this series of web log posts, you will see examples using my favorite programs: FamilySearch and Ancestry, and tips on using these features in other software. Once more, most genealogy software has like features to the ones I will exist demonstrating, although the terminology may be different.

Entering information about step family genealogy usually involves the following:

1. Adding all the spouses/parents to the tree.
2. Creating marriage events for each couple.
3. Recording when and where the divorce events occurred for each marriage involved, and/or recording decease events for each spouse that has died.
4. Calculation each child to each set of parents that belongs to them.
5. Indicating which child-parent relationships are biological and which are stride relationships.

Adding Multiple Spouses

Hither is the data nosotros need to tape for our instance:

Jane Doe married John Smith in 1978. They had a son, Bobby Smith. In 1980, they divorced. In 1982, Jane Doe married Walter Longbottom and Bobby Smith became Walter's stepson.

The first footstep is to record the two spouses and two marriage events for Jane Doe. This is adequately straightforward. I can't think of a unmarried genealogy software that won't let you add more than one spouse to an private. You just have to discover the right push.

On Beginnings, to add a spouse, click on the "Add together Family unit" button on the profile page for the individual:

Adding marriage events

To add together a marriage outcome in Ancestry, click the "Add together" button where information technology shows a list of facts:

You will see a listing of fact types to choose from. Select "Wedlock." And then make full in the information and select which spouse to attach this marriage to. You tin also click on "Change Spouse" and add together a new spouse from there.

Recording Divorce Events

Now we need to record a divorce event for the marriage betwixt Jane Doe and John Smith.

In Ancestry, select "Add together fact" merely like y'all did with the marriage event, and scroll downwardly and select the divorce issue.

Notice that there is a fact chosen "Divorce" and another chosen "Divorce filed." Divorces can exist complicated, and oftentimes you lot need to record multiple dates to tell the whole story. You tin enter when the divorce was filed and when the divorce was finalized every bit 2 dissever facts. If yous scroll down the list, you lot will come across another fact called "Separation." This is useful for recording when a couple stopped living together. Recording such events are useful for understanding the timeline of a family's life. Many divorces may not be finalized for a yr or more than after a separation occurs. Sometimes a separation happens but a divorce is never officially washed. Y'all need to know your family unit'due south history. If a marriage ended in death and not divorce, add the relevant information there as well past adding a expiry fact.

Adding Children to Families

Side by side you need to add all of the children who belong to each of the married couples you simply entered. If a child grew upward in multiple families, add together the same child to each set of parents. This means adding the child to both the birth family and the footstep family or stride families.

In Ancestry, click on "Add Family" and select "Child:"

Then make full in the data most the child. You tin can select which set of parents you wish to attach the child to:

To add additional parents to the child, go to the kid'due south profile. Then observe the push button on the top right corner of the screen that says "edit." Click on "Edit Relationships."

Click "Add together Alternate Father" or "Add Alternate Mother." If the begetter or mother is already in your tree, you lot can start typing the name, then click on it when information technology shows upwardly.

Defining Relationships: Ancestry

I more thing to do: define the relationships betwixt the children and their parents. A child may be biologically related to one father or mother, but raised past some other.

In Beginnings's "Edit Relationships" window, y'all tin define how a child is related to each parent. You can too choose which parents are preferred. In this example, John Smith is the preferred male parent, and so he will show up in the pedigree nautical chart equally Bobby's male parent. Click "Set as preferred" to select Walter Longbottom as the preferred father instead.

Again, yous should be able to do this in about other programs. Some of them have different human relationship terms than others. Selection the one that all-time explains the family's state of affairs, and add together explanatory notes if needed.

I hope this helps you better go along track of your pace family genealogy. See my FamilySearch tutorial here. Leave a comment if you have whatsoever questions.

More tutorials (coming shortly) for non-traditional family copse:

• Non-traditional Family Trees Tutorial: Pace Families in FamilySearch
• Non-Traditional Family Copse: Adoption in FamilySearch and Ancestry
• Non-traditional Family Trees: Homosexual Relationships
• Non-traditional Family Trees Tutorial: Non-married Partnerships (Coming Presently)

For more tips and resources for talking to your children about your non-traditional family tree, encounter this excellent post past Emily Kowalski Schroeder on Growing Niggling Leaves: Family Trees for EVERY Family

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Source: https://thehandwrittenpast.com/2018/06/19/divorce-step-families-genealogy/

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