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clandav wrote:

Let me also mention another problem which I have detected in the interpretation of the number of ‘marriages’ in generating the narrative we are discussing. Now that common law marriages are catered for , we can correctly show this status for individuals and couples but I would also like to see it reflected in the Fancy Tree View. I have numerous cases of a man re-commencing his life with his deceased wife’s sister after the death of his wife. They went on to have children together and it was in most respects a ‘marriage’ but the ceremony could not be conducted in England and Wales before 1907 because it was deemed to be illegal. Thus it was, and can now be shown as a common-law marriage. For such an individual, the Fancy Tree View generated narrative says Joe Smith married 2 times … and goes on to spell out the details of the two. Is it possible to check for ‘common-law marriage’ and handle it differently?. For example, as the partner in a common law marriage is referred to as a common-law wife, perhaps the text could say something like ‘Joe Smith had two wives, the first, xxxxxxx, he married in mm yyyy,….; the second, a common-law wife, was xxxx, whose common-law marriage commenced in mm yyyy’

I can imagine that may not be easy to achieve, and it also begs the question should other types of ‘marriage’ also be detected and handled differently – particularly ‘Registered Partnerships’ – and I think the answer to that should probably be yes. As you said at the outset Nigel, this is a complex area; probably, however much you tweak and change the existing code, there would always be ways in which it could be further improved, but as I said at the start, I think, even as it stands it is a a vast improvement on the past.

To an extent this has already been discussed here: http://kiwitrees.net/forums/topic/fancy-tree-and-never-married-never-together-parents/#post-5186

At present the solution is to check also for the ‘_NMR’ un-official but widely used GEDCOM tag. That is already used in the rest of kiwitrees, and is the method by which HUSB/WIFE is changed to “partner” in various parts of the system. So now in FTV the text for an unmarried (using _NMR tag) becomes (for example):

He had a relationship with Jane Doe, daughter of ……..

instead of

He married Jane Doe, daughter of ……..

However, this differs from your mention of “Common law”. Common law is a TYPE sub-tag attached to a marriage event. It extends the existing Religious and Civil descriptors to a marriage. These descriptors do not have any impact on the FTV texts (or texts in any part of the system). The couple are still treated and described as as husband and wife.

The various combinations of “couples” available today do raise interesting challenges. You might like to read the largely inconclusive debate on webtrees over recent days at: https://www.webtrees.net/index.php/en/forum/2-open-discussion/30566-how-to-set-facts-for-family-records and continued at https://github.com/fisharebest/webtrees/issues/688

In essence the issue is whether some partnerships are actually variants of “married” or of “not married”.

From my (technical) perspective, without highly complex and major changes to code the issue is actually simple:
If the tag = MARR we describe couples as husband and wife.
If the tag = _NMR we describe the couple as partners.

The choice between the two tags is up to each site owner.

The only other issue is whether we add TYPE descriptors to the _NMR tag as we have already for the MARR tag. I’m as yet unclear as to the advantages of that. But regardless, it wouldn’t change the basic husb/wife vs partners display.

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

Ah! – the _NMR tag is news to me. As you imply, it sounds as if that should be capable of meeting my needs. Thanks – I’ll look into it.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

I have been reading the webtrees thread on different types of “marriages” and the lack of consensus! My head spins!
<QUOTE kiwi>
From my (technical) perspective, without highly complex and major changes to code the issue is actually simple:
If the tag = MARR we describe couples as husband and wife.
If the tag = _NMR we describe the couple as partners. </>

I’ve been using:
MARR husband/wife “that have walked down the aisle” (male/femaie or same gender) so “He married Jane Doe” is fine

_COML husband/wife that live together without the formality and I know for sure they consider themselves a couple (and have legal status under eyes of Canadian law) so “He married Jane Doe” is fine although there is the technical difference

_NMR never used it but just changed a marriage and saw the difference; will have to wrap my head around difference of using instead of _COML but the “He had a relationship with Jane Doe” > sounds a bit like they were fooling around (which many of my Royals did, but not my relatives; well, some did). That said, it suffices – again, refer back to the record for exact details within Notes

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