Scenario: Man and a woman (who was married to another man at the time) have a child out of wedlock. Mother and biofather never married nor had a co-habitation relationship in any way.
The DNA Kinship Report for the mother incorrectly lists her as the “Spouse” of the child’s biofather. Similarly, the report for the biofather incorrectly lists him as the “Spouse” of the child’s mother.
I was thinking one possible way to avoid this unfortunate reporting scheme might be to create two separate Families: one with only the mother and her daughter, and another with only the biofather and his daughter. That way, the child’s parents would each be linked with their offspring, keeping the genealogical line accurate while avoiding the inaccurate link of the mother and biofather as “Spouses”. However, RM appears to require mother and biofather of a given child to both be Spouses within the same “Family”.
Is there a way to fix the incorrect reports within RM as currently configured?
I think you will find that is standard practice in genealogical software; Ancestry too shows biological parents of a child as ‘spouses’ whether they married or if the child was the result of a one night stand. As you say, RM does require 2 bio parents for a child and will obviously allow extra adoptive (etc) ones. If you have lines for both parents having 2 separate trees would likely make a duplicate person that could lead to issues further down the line.
@Charlie_Allingham --I played around a little bit with Ancestry on this issue-- I added a PARTNER to Sally in RM-- treeshared it up to Ancestry and it did show Gus as a spouse even though I had partner in RM— finally found where you could Edit Relationships in Ancestry and was able to change it to Partner…
And sorry, RM does NOT require you add 2 Biological parents–you can leave it blank BUT you are correct in that once you add the father in this case or unknown, RM will show him as a spouse in reports even though you have marked him as partner…
It appears the easiest way to fix an incorrect “Spouse” label in the parent’s DNA Kinship List Report (i.e., when the parents are not married) is to download the RM report to docx format (accessible via the little “floppy disk” icon above the report display in RM).
The question then is what to change “Spouse” to in the text of the revised report. I would generally use “Partner” for non-married parents, but use “Biological Parent” for the parents in my specific scenario.
EDIT: Using an edited docx version of this report is sort of a requirement anyways, as the RM Report itself does not say who the root person is for the report (other than “Self” in the listing). This might be easily overlooked or misunderstood by family members reviewing the report.
On the Edit Person screen’s Spouse row you can change the Father and Mother label to Partner. It will display on the Family view and on the Family Group Sheet. If you don’t add a marriage fact it won’t consider them married.
Thanks. I made the change to “Partner” labels that you suggested. However, their DNA Kinship Reports still incorrectly labeled them as “Spouse”. Can RM correct the report algorithm to always present the assigned Spouse or Partner labels?
