Tech Forum

The thread Ask and ye shall receive... Tip for 10/11/09 describes a process for adding nonmember spouses that I added to the wiki as the article Nonmember spouse. I have two questions on this topic:

First, in step 5 of the instructions, it says that you must add "Name, Birthdate, Is a Member? (select No), Marriage Date and Marriage Place"; "For the nonmember spouse’s record to show as Spouse in the household, all this information must be included."

In my testing both with test data, and working with a ward clerk on real data, this is not true. All that was required was the Name, and setting "Is a Member" to No. With only that minimal information, I was able to Add Spouse to Household, and the wife would be listed as Spouse.

So is the documentation simply inaccurate, or are there reasons this data is required? I can imagine a case where a nonmember husband is willing to have his name on ward lists, but he doesn't particularly want the Church to have his birthdate or marriage date. Is there any harm in omitting that data?


Second, the tip mentions that "Sometimes during a membership Refresh Data the nonmember records may be deleted or removed from their households in MLS. Following these instructions should help avoid this problem."

That's all well and good at the ward level. As far as I know, Refresh Data works fine for these part-member families. But I have big problems with the records of these part-member families being transmitted to the stake MLS.

Typically, the records are transmitted as separate households. The member will be in one household (along with any children), and the nonmember husband will be in a separate household.

I can combine the two into one household in stake MLS, but it's a bit of work to find all such households and combine them. I have to redo this work whenever I request a data refresh at the stake level. And when a new part member family moves into the stake or is created, I have no way of knowing that this happened, aside from periodically running some reports to see.

Also, I know that all the part-member families have been done properly in my own ward, and I have requested and received a full data refresh for the whole stake. The result is the splitting up of all these households in the stake MLS database, not the joining you would hope for.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is there a way to avoid the issue? The way I'm doing it is a pain, but it has to be done in order for stake directories to have the right household names.

Is there a way to show the member is married without entering the non-member spouse's name? I have a recently married member who's spouse is adamant about not having his name on any record of the Church in any way, shape, or form.

There must be some way to show the member is married especially in light of the upcoming change to the quarterly report that adds young single adult stats. To continue to show her, and other members, as single when they're actually married skews the numbers.

Suppose that her maiden name was Jane Smith and that she married John Doe. I think MLS will allow you to enter the name as "Mr. Doe" (i.e. Doe, Mr.). I think that would provide the anonymity the husband is requesting.

If she did not change her last name when she got married, then you might need to get a bit more creative, perhaps listing the husband as "Mr. Jane Smith" (i.e. Smith, Mr. Jane), "Husband of Jane Smith" (i.e. Smith, Husband of Jane) or something like that.

cjbeckert wrote:Is there a way to show the member is married without entering the non-member spouse's name?

Where are you trying to do this? There are two parts. Recording the marriage on her membership record as a spouse, and adding a "body" so she will not be alone when you print the Ward Directory.

cjbeckert wrote:Is there a way to show the member is married without entering the non-member spouse's name? I have a recently married member who's spouse is adamant about not having his name on any record of the Church in any way, shape, or form.

Record the marriage (which is public information, by the way) on the record of the spouse and include the name of the non-member spouse.

Do not create any other record in MLS.

The member will no longer show up on single member lists, and the non-member spouse will not show up in any directories, etc.

RussellHltn wrote:Where are you trying to do this? There are two parts. Recording the marriage on her membership record as a spouse, and adding a "body" so she will not be alone when you print the Ward Directory.

I'm trying to update her membership record in MLS but the non-member spouse doesn't want his name to appear on her record.

lajackson wrote:Record the marriage (which is public information, by the way) on the record of the spouse and include the name of the non-member spouse.

Good point. I was able to find the marriage information, including names and dates, on our county clerk's public records website. Since the information is public domain, I'll use that to update the MR.