The relationship check in practice¶

Families are the hardest part to get right after an import. A person who came in twice shows up in the person list, but a family that came in twice is only noticed when a child has two mothers in the family tree or a couple is shown twice. The relationship check gathers what doesn't fit together in one place: copies, details that contradict each other, couples whose relationship and marriage say different things, and children with too many parents.

Nothing is changed until you click a button and confirm. So you can run the check at any time, just to see how things look.

You'll find it under Administration → Maintenance → Relationships → Check relationships. → Relationships in the manual

When should you run it?¶

Right after an import, before you start merging persons. Then you see how the families came in.
After merges. When two persons are merged, the one that remains gets both persons' relationships and events. The same marriage can then exist twice, with two marriage events.
When a family looks odd: a child with two fathers in the family tree, a partner switcher showing the same partner twice, or siblings who are also listed as married.
When you've upgraded PastPaths. Data from older versions often lacks the link between the relationship and the couple's events.
As a habit, for example once a month. When all groups are empty, the families are tidy.

Make a backup first

The fixes can't be undone. Make a backup before you fix many relationships at once. → Backups

The order that saves time¶

The result is split into three groups. Take them in this order, and you won't have to redo anything:

Partner and sibling relationships. Click Fix automatically at the heading. It only fixes things that don't need your judgment: copies, missing directions, and details that differ between the directions. Read the confirmation before you approve.
Parent relationships. Click Remove copies and then go through Children with more than one possible parent. That's where you merge parents who exist twice.
Run the check again. The merges often give new copies of relationships and double marriages.
Partner relationships and events last. Now the couples are the right persons, and what remains is what really doesn't match.

Read the colors¶

In the Events not linked to the couple's relationship section, each row says what happens if the event is linked:

Blue means the link is safe. The relationship gets the event's date, and nothing else changes.
Orange means you need to think. The event doesn't fit the relationship as it looks today, for example a marriage for a couple listed as cohabiting. Such rows are never fixed from here.

So orange isn't an error in itself. It's a question to you: is the event right, or is the relationship?

Common situations¶

The same family was imported twice¶

The check shows exact copies of the relationships and children with two fathers and two mothers with the same names.

Did the whole file come in twice? Undo one of the imports in the import history instead of cleaning up by hand. → Undo an import
Did only part of it come in twice, for example from two different files? Fix automatically, remove the copies of the parent relationships, and merge the parents in Children with more than one possible parent. Run the check again and then take the double marriages in the event duplicate search.

The second wife or the first husband¶

A child with two mothers doesn't have to be a duplicate. Compare the mothers' years of death with the child's year of birth in the list. If one mother died before the child was born, she was probably the father's first wife, and it's the relationship to the child that's wrong. Open the child by clicking the name and remove that relationship. The back arrow takes you to the check again.

The couple remarried each other¶

Two married relationships between the same persons, with different dates, can be correct. Click Checked, and the pair isn't shown again until something changes in their relationships.

Married without a marriage¶

This is common in older data and in imports where the couple is listed as married but the family has no marriage. Create marriage adds a marriage with the relationship's date. The event then owns the date, as in the rest of the program, and you have a place to put the source and the place.

Do you know they married? Create the marriage and then open it to add a source and a place.
Don't you know? Leave it. Rather change the relationship to partner until you have a source.

Create marriage for all saves time when you know the details are right, for example after an import from a program where every couple with a marriage date lacks a marriage event.

Cohabitants who later married¶

If the couple has a moving in together event and the relationship is listed as cohabiting, a later marriage turns orange: it would change the relationship's form. Open the person and change the relationship to married, then run the check again. Now the marriage can be linked. The moving in together event is kept.

Dates that differ from the event¶

Usually the relationship's date was typed in by hand and the event got another one. Fix dates writes the event's date to the relationship. Check the source first: if it's the relationship's date that's right, change the date on the event instead. The relationship follows.

The partner tag after an import¶

Couples whose family had no marriage became partner, since the form is unknown, and got the tag -gedcom-partner-YYYY-MM-DD (or -tng-partner-…, -myheritage-partner-…, and so on). Filter the person list by the tag and go through the couples. Don't change them all to married at once. In the past, a couple with children was usually married, but it's the source that should show it.

Smart tricks¶

Click the names. The person opens and the back arrow takes you to the check again, so you can fix one family at a time without searching.
Split up the work. Tag all in Children with more than one possible parent puts the tag -Check parents on the children. Filter by the tag the next time you have some time to spare.
Look at the family afterwards. The family tree's network view draws every person once. There you see right away whether a child still hangs from two family points. → The network view
Is a group empty? Then it's done. Only sections with something in them are shown.