Tech Forum

My husband is still shown alive on family search, he died several months ago. Who can file that death date?

joycesims wrote:My husband is still shown alive on family search, he died several months ago. Who can file that death date?

That depends:

• If he was a member of the Church, then the ward clerk needs to record the death. Once it has been recorded on the Church membership records, his official record should be marked deceased in FamilySearch and thus become visible to all users.
• If he was not a member of the Church, then what you see on FamilySearch is simply your private record for him. You can go ahead and mark that record as Deceased in FamilySearch.
• What I said in the first point above applies only to his official record on FamilySearch. An official record can usually be determined by looking at who contributed a vital field; the contributor should be "LDS Church" (I like to check the Sex, since it is unlikely to have been changed by anyone else). If the record for him in FamilySearch that you are looking at is not contributed by "LDS Church" then it is not his official record, and it is simply your private record as I mentionend in the second point above. In this case, you should look for his official record (using the Find option on the Family Tree menu). Supply his name and birth date and death date and you should be able to find him (assuming his official record has been marked Deceased). If you also have a private record, then you'll need to mark it deceased and then merge it into the official record (make sure that the official record is the one that is retained). Doing this merge will make sure that his official record also has any photos, stories, or other details that you attached to your private record for him.

Would a living husband ever show up as an official record? Or would it have to be a private record?

Is there a year delay in showing up in FamilySearch? This post suggests there is a delay of some type.

russellhltn wrote:Would a living husband ever show up as an official record?

I don't believe so. So that's why I explained how to find the official record (which would only be visible if he has been marked as Deceased).

FamilySearch users often get confused about the distinction between private records for living people, which they have been seeing for years, and the official record. There is no mechanism for a private record being marked as Deceased up on the death of the person, except for the user to mark them as deceased. Although the official record may become public upon the recording of the death, users will rarely happen to see it unless they look for it using the Find feature.

russellhltn wrote:Is there a year delay in showing up in FamilySearch? This post suggests there is a delay of some type.

The wording of that post is misleading. Records of deceased members of the Church show up in FamilySearch pretty quickly (within a day or so of the clerk marking the record as Deceased). I've seen that happen many times. That post is talking about the visibility of the ordinance section of the recently deceased person, which is subject to time restrictions. But this discussion is about record visibility, which has nothing to do with ordinance time limits.

OK, so the most likely scenario is that the person the OP is looking at is a private record (which will not update automatically). She needs to search for the official record - in other words search for a duplicate person.