My niece has been together with her man in 25 years, but they are not married. How do I put that on my tree please

Question

how do you set that on, I put the n she was married but find out they never married how do I change that and to what please

Comments

I discovered this to be a problem when I was writing training materials for a beginners genealogy class. Existing forms for standard family group sheets and pedigree charts used husband and wife. Children are born to fathers and mothers. Parents may, or may not, be married. I changed my hand-outs.

For the above mentioned situation;  if there are no children born to the couple,  I  had my students decide for themselves how to handle the relationship in their written narrative. No children,  not charted.

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Thank you very much for your kindness I just remove him from my niece but now he stay in my unconnected sources and I can't delete him

Thank you

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Add his parents and any siblings. Then add the narrative about his relationship with your niece to his page. Someone will be looking for him and his biological family in a few generations. ☺

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Thank you Joan I don't really know much about him, I really just want to have him remove from my unconnected sources, but it is not easy.

But it was kind of you to help

Answer 1

The solution to this would be for WikiTree to add a qualifier to the "Spouse" connection to allow people to be labeled as "partners" (or perhaps "not legally married", but I'd prefer "partners"). I can see that implementing that feature could be a problem technically, but it would help resolve a lot of concerns that people have about gay marriages and domestic partnerships, common-law marriages and similar unofficial arrangements that were culturally accepted, modern people who live together without marriage (and might have children without bothering to marry), and also my black-sheep ancestor who abandoned his wife and children and openly shacked up with another woman for several decades.

Comments

Thank you very much manage to delete it

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...."openly shacked-up" is a very funny expression.  :D

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I have been with my partner nearly 16 years, we have no children together so I just put some blurb in the marriage location window to say partners under common law, ie not married.

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Well thank you for your mail. That might be a good idea.

It can be more difficult in the future, because do not get married.

Wish you a great day

Susan

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Not funny UNLESS you mean "funny -peculiar" :  It expresses an outworn cultural and very negative BIAS that has nothing to do with the relationship between the two people who are partners AT ALL.

Answer 2

If they have children,Then they should marry,Plus if something happens to

her boyfriend,How will she surive.I live in California,this would be recognized

as a marriage here.This could be a big problem in some states.

Comments

Thank you for your reply,

But what I was asking how do I put it on  my tree there are no mention

People live together only spouse

I put them as married but they where not.

Answer 3

The only way is to mention in the bio that they had a common law relationship. Each child will have the appropriate parents. There is also a way to mark someone as "Never Married". Go to Add a Spouse and there is a link to mark your niece unmarried.

Comments

Thank you that was helpful

Answer 4

See this help page on how to handle unmarried parents:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unmarried_parents

Comments

Thanks for your help