Tech Forum

One of the ward clerks in my stake has a household where the wife has the status of "Other" instead of "Spouse". I tried playing around with that ward's MLS for a few minutes in hopes of fixing it, but got nowhere. Anyone have any ideas?

jwtaber wrote:One of the ward clerks in my stake has a household where the wife has the status of "Other" instead of "Spouse". I tried playing around with that ward's MLS for a few minutes in hopes of fixing it, but got nowhere. Anyone have any ideas?

The fix for this particular problem is in the wiki under Nonmember spouse.

aebrown wrote:The fix for this particular problem is in the wiki under Nonmember spouse.

The wife in this case is a member. Are you sure this will still work?

jwtaber wrote:The wife in this case is a member. Are you sure this will still work?

Yes. I've done it on both the test data and watched over the shoulder while a ward clerk did it for the exact situation you describe.

The ward clerk tried that and it didn't work. Any other ideas?

Are the detailed facts about the marriage (spouse name, marriage date, marriage place) recorded within the the membershiip detail for both husband and wife? I don't think MLS will let you form a "household" with head and spouse unless that prerequisite is met.

If you drill down in the membership detail, and see that there is missing data, I think the corrective steps would be.

• Temporarily separate the wife into a household of her own as head-of-house.
• Fix the missing detail in whichever member's record needs it. (Detail data might even be missing in both, in which case the clerk needs to get it from a marriage document.)
• Do a send/receive and wait until CHQ updates the master records, then do another send/receive to download the final updates.
• Merge the wife's record back into the husband's household.

jwtaber wrote:The ward clerk tried that and it didn't work. Any other ideas?

Sorry, I assumed that the husband was a nonmember -- that's where I have seen this situation most often. Even though you didn't say he was a member, I suppose that he is, or those steps would have worked.

As RossEvans pointed out, it's essential that the Current Spouse information on each individual record is correct and links the member to the spouse so that the individual records are linked to each other. If that is the case, then adding the wife back to the household will automatically make her the spouse. If the records are not linked properly via the Current Spouse, then adding her to the household will add her as Other.

I’m a 7-yr ward MC and 1-yr Stake MC, but this is my first post to this site. I had been having this problem for about 2 ½ years as well for the 6 (then 5, now 4) part-member couples in our ward where the husband is the NM (the problem doesn’t show where the wife is the NM). I called the Memb Dept a total of about 5 times on it. The 2nd rep in Nov ’08 gave me good instructions on how to fix it, that are much like RossEvans posted here. So thru the years, I’ve gotten used to the glitch reappearing every so often, and having to re-set them; once you get the hang of it, you can save steps by combining operations for all your PM couples, before moving onto the next step. The first 2 or 3 Memb reps couldn’t tell me much as to how widespread this glitch was; but the last two indicated that they have become more aware of the issue, and maybe by now the most recent MLS version has resolved it (I last reset ours at the end of Dec). I’ll check how ours looks next time I’m on our MLS.

Please let me know if you’d like me to send a copy of my more detailed instructions on re-setting multiple PM couple listings.

jhigbee wrote:Please let me know if you’d like me to send a copy of my more detailed instructions on re-setting multiple PM couple listings.

Sounds like something that would be a good addition to the Wiki.

jhigbee wrote:Please let me know if you’d like me to send a copy of my more detailed instructions on re-setting multiple PM couple listings.

How do your instructions differ from what is already on the wiki under Nonmember spouse for dealing with household records with nonmember spouses?