Question

When a spouse dies, and the other remarries, would I put the marriage ended when spouse died?

Comments

It should be sufficient to add it in the Bio.  Marriages- 1st Marriage, the date, location, to xxxx b xxxx d xxxx---2nd marriage, the date, location, to xxxx etc... The Death date and date of remarriage will say it all.  I have a case of a split, where no divorce has been located, and the one spouse found a partner.  The partners lived together and had 12 children..  They married after the death of the first spouse.  Their marriage occured just before the first of their children got married.  Family tradition says they married to legitimize their children.  We all have similar confusion that is hard to address in a profile.  I'm glad we have a Bio where we can handle the odd information.

Answer 1

Hi! Think you should just add the dead and the new spouse. You don't have to end the marriage, as everyone can guess I persume

Answer 2

Since there is a space for it, then yes I'd put in the death date of the spouse since that is the end of the marriage.

Comments

I agree with Martin. When your spouse dies, your marital status changes. You are no longer considered "married", but "widowed". You don't HAVE to put an end date, but if you want to, then it's logical that the end of the marriage would be DoDeath or DoDivorce.

Answer 3

Deb,

Honestly... I would say it depends on the religion of the person "if known". For me if my wife were to die I'm still bound to our agreement as I hope she would be as well :P.... Sure the saying is "till death do us part" but thats only the physical self. I would say leave the marriage alone and place the death date, because the marriage didn't end the person did. If the spouse remarries then you just place the new spouse in. I have done this for my own family. Sure it kinda looks funny that my sister has three husbands, but the dates are there for all the important info.

The one thing that bugs me though in wikitree is it never adds the children from another person as a brother/sister to a child of the other spouse. I have three step brothers and a half brother. The half brother shows up because one of my family is his bio as well. But my other brothers don't show up because we share no blood. To me they are my family blood or not they are my brothers. Anyone know a work around for this? hehe maybe I need to make that a question.

Comments

To answer your question about step-siblings: Unfortunately there's no workaround for this, because siblings aren't stored as siblings on WikiTree; anyone who shares a parent with you is displayed as a sibling.

However, the thing that, in my opinion, makes WikiTree so much more powerful than the average family tree software is the biography. While step-siblings won't show up with other immediate family at the top of the page, they can certainly be written about and linked to in the bio of the profile.

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Lianne,

Thanks for the info. I figured that was about the only way to link it, but the downfall of that is data data data everywhere. I for one read everything and look at everything, but the average Joe... Lets say the average Ancestry user looks at date name relation to X or Y. Almost all freeware and paid for gen software has a Notes/Bio section so you can do this in almost all of them. My peve is just that the relation is not set per profile and if you were to say use software or a homemade database to pull data from a site odds of the bio being looked at are slim.

It's also like the Middle name delima with 99% of all software and sites. Many people have more than one middle name yet there are no spaces for these. Heck even the social security office freaks out when you have more than one middle name. My kids poor cards have writing from the top to bottom. Sure many have locations for a prefered or "nick" name, but these are legal given names not optional names. The only option I have ever had for this issue is to put it all in one cell, but this poses a problem with searches and also databases in general. The ofen smoosh the name to one or put in dashes or lines or other junk. I know nothing will fit every persons needs perfectly, but there is hope :)

I enjoy wiki tree a lot. for me it's more about the people here. I sandbagged and read posts for two months before I joined and many people here are extremely professional and loaded with information. Unlike the ancestry forums where everyone thinks they are 100% correct they are direct decendants of washington or king x or y.  :)

Answer 4

One important part of the answer is 'What does WikiTree do with end date information?' I looked and could not see where it is ever used.  I have been married twice, the first ending in divorce.  The only place this marriage end is mentioned is where I have put it in my biography.  This seemingly is never used by WikiTree.  My advice is leave it out.

I found where WikiTree uses it:

Husband of Henrika Eleonora Nassokin — married April 28, 1808 (to 1813) in Porvoo, Finland

Here the first marriage ended with the husbands's death.  I put it in and there it popped up.  My advice now is to put it in.  Especially if there is a next marriage.

Answer 5

I don't. I only use the marriage end date for a divorce or annulment. The main reasons I don't put an end date for the death of the first spouse are (i) it looks odd to me in the profile of the deceased spouse, (ii) in the narrative bio, you don't say their marriage end, you say the first spouse died and (iii) if you were going to add marriage end dates for death, for consistency, you have to use it in every profile of a marriage person (unless both spouses died simultaneously) even if they didn't get remarried.