Family Fact Type question

Can you add more than one person to a Family Fact Type?
Currently I only see where you can share this with one other individual.
Is it possible to share it with multiple people?
If not, this would be an awesome feature to add for a future update.

No.

A family fact in RM really ought to be thought of as a couple fact and therefore it can only be for two people. It may be for a married couple, or even for a couple who may have had children without being married. This distinction becomes especially important for something like a Census (Family) fact where it looks like you can use the fact for a whole family. You can’t. Think of it is Census (couple) and you will realize that you will still need to enter census for the children separately. So with this in mind, the answer to your question is still no.

This design is not specific to RM. Most genealogy software works this way and GEDCOM files work this way. You create a thing called a “family”. You then add one or two parents to the “family”. It’s usually two people connected to the “family”, but it can be only a single person if the other parent is not known. Then you can connect zero or more people to the family in the role of children.

It may seem counterintuitive, but that’s the way it works. With this system the spouses are not connected to each other. Rather, each spouse is connected to the “family” with the role of parent. And children are not connected to their parents. Rather, the children are connected to the “family” with the role of children.

In this system, facts such as marriage and divorce are called “family” facts but they are really couple facts as they don’t really apply to the children.

RM does have shared facts where any number of people can be connected to each other in certain ways and it has nothing to do with families and spouses and parents and children. The best way to see how this can work is with some examples.

For example, a Marriage fact for a couple can be shared with lots of people. Marriage could be shared with a minister who serves the ceremony in the role of Officiant. Marriage could be shared with the person who serves as Best Man with role of BestMan. A Burial fact could be shared with each of the Pallbearers with the role of Pallbearer. A Birth fact could be shared with the person who delivered the baby with the role of MidWife or Doctor.

So Marriage facts and Divorce facts and those sorts of things are not facts which are shared. Rather, they are couple facts. And shared facts are something else altogether.

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