Description of Error - 404: Marriage before birth

The marriage date is prior to the birth date shown. Either the birth or marriage dates, or both, are incorrect, or the relationship is incorrect.

Content of info column: Empty.

Possible Causes

• The most common cause is a typo in the birth date and/or the marriage date.
• Poor guess of the birth date and/or the marriage date.

Action Steps

Correct this error by:

1. Correcting any typos based on information found in the profile. If no information is found then...
2. Research to find a source which will determine the correct birth and marriage dates. If no sources are found then...
3. Replace date(s) with a reasonable guess based on a date of death or the birth/death date of the spouse or other relatives. Mark the date(s) as "Uncertain." Leave a note in the profile stating that the date is an estimate and what you used as a comparison for estimation.
4. If the profile has no sources and no reasonable guess can be made, delete the single date which is clearly incorrect (rarely needed). Add a note in the profile regarding what was in the date field and why it was removed.

• Note: To edit a marriage date first click on the profile's edit tab. Then look for the "edit marriage" link below the spouse in the Edit Family section on the right.

Error Status

For each Error you can set status. You can set it as Corrected, Not corrected, False Error, Proposed merge or just add a Comment.

If there are related errors for the profile, you will also see them on status page.

Full description is available on Status Help Page.

Questions and Discussions on this Error

You can read what other people have asked here db_error_404.

You can also share your best practices, experiences, problems about the Error by posting a question in G2G. If you create a new G2G discussion for this Error, add tag data_doctors and db_error_404.

Technical Stuff

A person's marriage date must be after her/his birth date. This is checked only for marriages, where both spouses have public or open profile, since only those marriages are included in the database dump. Another condition is that both dates must be present on the profile.

Suggestion reports

You can see the weekly prepared list of the latest suggestions prepared on March 16th 2025. You can also get the online report on WikiTree+.