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The short answer to that question is ‘no’ I’m afraid.

Technically it is (sort of) possible but it is not something that is or ever will be included in kiwitrees.

But to explain further ……

Exactly what you are describing was added to PhpGedView (the grandfather of kiwitrees). It was added as a “student exercise” by students at the university where PGV’s creator taught. When webtrees, and subsequently kiwitrees was developed from PGV a decision was made to remove that feature. The reasons were:

1 – due to the extreme complexity it never worked.
2 – the student developers never finished it, and were never around long enough to do that, or to maintain it.
3 – one of it’s key justifications (having smaller separate trees that would be easier to manage and faster to load) is no longer necessary.
4 – there are other ways, if any are really required, to ‘hide’ parts of the tree from some family.

The complexity comes not from the seemingly simple concept of linking two individuals, but from the issues that arise when all the other record-types become tangled in the ‘solution’. Family, sources, shared notes, media objects etc. What to do when parts of one side of the family mix with another on a census record, or by a later marriage, or just by appearing on a common photograph? Of course, you might say that will never happen – but we can’t write code just for your family. It might happen, and from that previous attempt at the code we know it does. Families in reality are often not linked by just one common record, but by many at different generations.

The smaller size of separate trees for (say) your father’s side and your mothers was, perhaps 10 years ago, a relevant issue. But improvements to code and the general power of modern devices means that is no longer a major concern. Trees of 100,000+ individuals run well on kiwitrees today.

In terms of ‘other ways’ there are a number:

1 – The simplest is by adding a record to an individual containing a URL for the corresponding individual in another tree.

2 – The other, built in to kiwitrees, is the “Restrict to immediate family” option you can set for any registered user on your site. (Administration > Users > Manage users > use the ‘drop-down for the specific user). There is a help icon by the option with more details there.

3 – Finally, and in my (personal) opinion the most important, is that as the administrator for your family tree you should question whether statements like “part of the family of my mother, you should not see the rest of the family of my father” are an acceptable way to record and display historical FACTS. On my own tree I will not under any circumstances agree to such censorship or intolerance (sorry if this sounds harsh to you). I make it very clear to any family member wanting to register on my site (I have over 100) that ALL family history is visible to EVERY registered member. I don’t even allow the use of the “Restrict to immediate family” option, though I can accept that some sites do. I have had such requests, and also ones like “I don’t want my children to know I have been married and divorced before“, and I always explain that it is not the site policy to hide such facts. If that does not satisfy them, they can not be registered.

I apologise if the last paragraph is long, and strongly worded, but it is an issue I feel strongly about. 😐

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info