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Archiver > TMG > 2004-07 > 1088985685


From: Dennis Lee Bieber <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Spouses even though no marriage shown?
Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2004 17:01:25 -0700
References: <485ea3c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><8806b8c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><5a5dc4c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><07c333c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><6.1.0.6.2.20040704124705.02eb8cb0@popd.ix.netcom.com><9d2f70c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <9d2f70c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk>


On or about 07/04/04 16:01 a carrier pigeon from Tim Powys-Lybbe delivered:

>In fact I thing the last criterion is wrong as it gives the wrong thing
>in TMG. An unmarried couple are living together. They cohabit. They
>have children (which is usually why you enter them into your genealogy
>system).

If they have children, then -- to my way of thinking -- the
linkage between them is via the children.

>So the way this works in Generations means that the event to be created
>in TMG should be in the marriage group, but this particular tag (I do
>hope I have the right word) should be called Unmarried. If you do this
>then the people appear as "spouses" ("lovers"?) in the Family and Tree
>displays in Generations. With the present importing procedures they do
>not appear together in the trees at all, which is wrong for how they
>appear in Generations.

I would expect them to show up in an ancestor tree rooted on a
child, as the parents of that child. Are you saying they don't?

I have no idea how I'd ever handle a status of "unmarried" except
by the total absence of a marriage event. After all, you can't date it ("Mr
X and Ms Y were unmarried in some place on a date" ???; that sounds more
like some strange phrasing for an annulment or divorce). What happens if
down the road you find some sleepy backwoods record of a marriage. Under
normal TMG operations, you'd now enter a marriage event with a source. If
your "unmarried" event existed, would you remember to remove it? TMG sure
isn't going to remove it, though it may offer to change "primacy" to the
new marriage. Now you get a report that reads "Mr. X and Ms Y were
unmarried. ... Mr. X and Ms Y were married at sleepy backwoods on
hypothetical date".


>A similar thing should be done for the Common Law tag. This is more

Now this one I'll agree with... something like a "marr-comm" (or
"marr-claw"? <G>) should be created -- since common law marriage has a
legal definition, and one could find/cite evidence to support such a state.
But "Unmarried"? There is a saying: "You can't prove a negative" -- there
is no way one can ever prove that a couple were not married, all one can
state is that one has not found evidence to the contrary (I'd even consider
a death-bed confession to be no more than hearsay, and as valid as a
death-bed claim of a secret marriage).


>program means. But Wholly-Genes decided to offer this excellent import
>facility which certainly persuaded me to buy a copy of TMG. Already
>two TMG problems on handling Generations files have been fixed since I
>bought my copy of TMG. My hope is that this one will be fixed too.
>
>One interesting fact with the Generations files is that they are
>totally exchangeable with Reunion files for the Apple mac. (I have done
>this successfully in the past.) Leister Productions who own the Reunion
>program might be more willing to assist Wholly Genes than the current
>lack of a clear developer of Generations.

I'm sure WG would be happy to have someone define all the "rules"
Generations uses to interpret its data, rather than having to go from
internal reverse engineering of the raw data files <G>

Though I'm pretty sure they won't create an "Unmarried" marriage
event type, for the reasons I indicate above


--
> ============================================================ <
> | Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG <
> | Bestiaria Support Staff <
> ============================================================ <
> Home Page: <http://bieberd.home.netcom.com/>; <


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