Tech Forum

The membership clerk and I were recently discussing an issue regarding (the lack of) deceased family member information when viewing and printing MLS records. This has caused some questions/confusion from family members wondering why their beloved ones no longer appear on their individual records, or when we as clerks are trying to determine if the death of a spouse/child was recorded correctly. I'll appreciate insight on this, thanks.

I'll offer a couple of thoughts:

1) The membership records you see are not everything. It's what's needed to assist the ward in meeting the member's spiritual needs. Deceased members are no longer the concern of a unit once the data has been recorded.

2) Once a spouse dies, they are no longer a "current spouse" (at least from a civil/mortal-centric viewpoint), they become a "prior spouse". MLS does not contain information about prior spouses other then if the member is sealed to one. Attempting to keep a deceased spouse as a current spouse could lead to confusion as it would indicate the person is still married here in mortality.

If there questions about the records of a deceased member, I'd suggest contacting CHQ.

In the next release of MLS, a deceased spouse will be shown as the current spouse as long as the member does not remarry. If the member remarries, then the deceased spouse will become a prior spouse. I don't know if this helps your particular problem, but it has been much requested.

smithgw wrote:In the next release of MLS, a deceased spouse will be shown as the current spouse as long as the member does not remarry. If the member remarries, then the deceased spouse will become a prior spouse.

Thank you, smithgw. I would also like to suggest that deceased children remain on their parents records, and be desigated as such -- we've had a few parents concerned their records were incorrect because their deceased children do not appear.

I realize there is an 'administration' basis behind the choice of not showing deceased members. This is sometimes difficult to explain to members, particularly those who have lost a young child -- we obviously don't want members feeling like their deceased spouse/child is just a name that gets blanked out because it's "just easier to deal with".

smithgw wrote:In the next release of MLS, a deceased spouse will be shown as the current spouse as long as the member does not remarry. If the member remarries, then the deceased spouse will become a prior spouse. I don't know if this helps your particular problem, but it has been much requested.

None of my ward members' deceased spouses show up on their records, and MLS has had a couple of releases since this thread started. I agree that deceased children should show up on a person's IOS. There are two families in my ward that are bitter enough about losing young children, and fell away for years because of it. Now that they have started coming back to Church with great effort on the part of the ward (and even the stake presidency in one family's case), if they see that the children are not on the record, that could be really difficult.

jbh001 wrote:This could be due to needing to refresh the data from HQ. I have noticed that new records coming in will show a deceased spouse, but records that have been in MLS "forever" won't show a deceased spouse. I think that any change to a membership record (like changing a phone number or address) would force a refresh of that record from HQ.

Thanks. I'll try it.