Contacting Ward Clerk for Less Active Member

[adriantwilliams]

Can someone share with me how to look up the contact information for the ward clerk of a less active brother who married a sister in my ward?

The back story:
I received a membership audit finding in my ward for an undocumented civil marriage. The couple does not live together due to the wife's children from a first marriage, but the she has had some health struggles and the husband, a less active member, asked that they get married so that he can make health related decisions if needed.

They were married civilly and when I go to input the marriage into LCR, the following Alert shows up:

"A current marriage is already recorded for this member and must be terminated before another marriage can be recorded. Please work with the member and his or her clerk to update this information as necessary."

Since there is no documented marriage on the wife's membership record, this must be regarding the husband. I expect that the brother and his then wife fell away from the church before that marriage ended and so the divorce was never logged in LCR. So, I believe the best thing to do would be to call this brother's ward clerk and work with him to resolve the situation.

Any help on how to find this contact information of this brother's ward clerk is appreciated!

[jdlessley]

You can use the Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders (CDOL) to get that information. Enter the unit name in the search box to find the unit and the clerk contact information will be listed.

[russellhltn]

If you know where he lives, you can use the Meetinghouse Locator to figure out what ward that might be. However, if he's less active, it might be in the "Address Unknown" file.

[adriantwilliams]

I should have stated that I don't know where he lives or what ward he's supposed to be going to. Is there a way to discover if he is in the 'address unknown' file or not?

[jdlessley]

Not if you don't have his membership record number. If a member is not in your unit the support people are restricted by privacy to not give out any information. With that said, I would still call the GSD to see what they can do to help you.

[lajackson]

I would still call the GSD to see what they can do to help you.

Yes, you should call. The last time I was in a situation similar to this one I was a bishop and needed to contact relatives of a member who had died. The Membership Department would not give me the member contact information, but was willing to give me the names of the bishops and their phone numbers. I worked through them to gain the information I needed.

[BrianEdwards]

And on the reverse side, when a leader gets a request like this from another leader, it's good to remember to always talk with your local member first, prior to sharing their info. Even when everything seems above-board, there are situations where there are unexpected complications, and routing information flow through the Bishop (or clerk) instead of directly via the member, may be advisable.