* Step sister

[GeneSniper]

Quick question, should FH6 show a stepsister as a relation to the root person?

[tatewise]

Whether it should or not is a good question, but FH V6 does not, and will probably just say Sister.
But that may depend on how you have configured the relationships.
e.g.
The Siblings may be linked to the same Mother, but each linked to a different Father.
Alternatively, the Siblings may be linked to both Parents, but with the Relationship to Father set to Step for alternate Siblings and Fathers.

[LornaCraig]

What Mike is describing is a half-sister relationship (i.e. the individuals have one parent in common). This is not the same as a step-sister relationship, where there is no biological link between the individuals (they don't have a parent in common, but a parent of one of them has married a parent of the other one). This can be displayed diagramatically, but it won't appear in the Focus window or the Relationship to Root column in the Records window, if that is what you mean.

(A half-sister relationship, however, is displayed as such in the Focus window and Records window).

[GeneSniper]

Thanks Lorna,

It is actually my step-sister, I had never noticed that FH said No Direct Relationship until today. I was sure FTM did say step-sister and actually imported my tree back into it just to check I was right before I posted my question. I thought I was maybe missing something.


Thanks again

[GeneSniper]

Hi Guys

Sorry to bring this up again, but I have just set up my father as my step sisters, step dad and when I now ask FH7 how we are related it says that she is my half sister but that my father is her step dad. How can this be? there is no biological link between us, it gets that my father is her step dad but it then says I am her half sister which is not the case. What am I doing wrong here?

[tatewise]

It would help if you provided exactly what relationships you have set up.

Which children (you and your step-sister) are linked to which parents (father and mother)?
Has the 'Relationship to Parent's been set to 'step', and if so for which parents?

[GeneSniper]

Hi Mike,

My father married my step mum, both had children from their first marriages but none together.
In my tree I have my step sister with her mother and father and myself with my mother and father. I then have my father and step mother's marriage with my step sister as his stepdaughter. Hope that makes sense. I even tried adding my brother and I to their family with my brother and I as step children to my step mum, but that looked weird as we never lived as a family and FH still never saw us as anything other than half brother/sister.

[LornaCraig]

Yes, it is odd. I have just reconstructed a group like this. I confirm that if your step sister is not explicitly linked to your father as his step daughter FH shows that she has ‘no direct relationship' to you (in the focus window, when you are the file root). But when she is explicitly linked as your father’s step daughter FH says she is your half sister.

The problem becomes more obvious if you make your father the file root. If your step sister is not explicitly linked to your father as his step-daughter the Focus window says she is ‘Daughter of wife of <your father>’. But when she is explicitly linked to him as his step-daughter the focus window says she is his daughter!

In fact once your step sister has been linked to her second set of parents (her biological mother and your father) it makes no difference what the relationship is set to (adopted, birth, de facto, foster, illegitimate, step). None of these subtleties are taken into account, FH just sees that in her second ‘Family as Child’ your father is her father, and looks no further.

[E Wilcock]

I have a similar family group way back in my tree, although in my case the couple (both widowed and with children by the previous spouse) did have a third group of children together.
As two of the unrelated descendants married each other, fh software has no problem in showing their relationship to me. But fh correctly shows there is no blood relationshiop between the previous children and correctly shows the relationship to the later sibblings as half brother or half sister. It does not define them as step sibbings. It says (correctly)
Catherine Jane (Kate) HAY is daughter of wife of George MAWER
But as you have found, it does not say which wife. So I agree that it sounds odd.
But I keep my trees in separate probjects so until today, I was interested only in the relationship to the Root person, my grandmother.

[tatewise]

I would have to run up FH V6 to check if it was the same there.
If FH is ignoring the child Relationship settings then surely that is a fault that should be reported?

[LornaCraig]

Choosing what to display as the relationship might be tricky in some cases.

birth and illegitimate should both show the relationship as ‘son/daughter of’

adopted should also show as ‘son/daughter of’ (because legally that is the case)

foster should probably show 'no direct relationship' because fostering is usually a temporary arrangement

step should show as step (it is certainly incorrect to show as son/daughter, which has the knock-on effect of showing step siblings as half siblings)

But what about de facto? This could cover almost anything. It could cover informal adoption (in the days before there was any formal legal process for adoption). Or it might mean nobody knows/knew whether the parent was the biological parent but he might have been. Or it might just mean ‘no direct relationship but he liked the child so treated him like a son’.

An added complication is that these days the popularity of DNA techniques means that for some purposes it is more important to show the biological relationship than the legal or social relationship. For this purpose adopted and step should both show ‘no direct relationship’. And for cases where DNA evidence has shown an assumption of paternity to be wrong we probably need another category, de facto but proved to be non biologial.

[RS3100]

I have several similar instances in my tree, including my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother who were both "fostered". Because in each instance, they spent more time living with their "second" family, be that their natural mother and subsequent step-father or a completely new family, I include them as both children of their birth families and foster/adoptive families, but it does lead to FH describing the child as the step-parent or adoptive family's child, which can be confusing.

The way I have worked around this is to construct a custom sentence for the birth fact, which explains the actual situation in reports. I have just entered another yesterday for the second wife of one of my 1C3R cousins, who was born out of wedlock. Her mother then married an apparently different partner when the child was 2 years of age.

I have entered her as the daughter of the mother and first (unknown) partner, and of the subsequent married family where I show her as the birth child of the mother and step-daughter of her husband.

The custom sentence for the birth fact reads, "{individual} was born out of wedlock {date} {place} to Emily, a single mother who married Frederick SMITH in December 1877, some two years later. Her father was probably a JONES, judging by her third forename (there was a family of JONES' in the area at that time). She appears in the 1881 census as Hannah SMITH, daughter of Frederick and Emily, aged 5". (Names changed to protect the innocent).

So although a narrative report starts by describing her as the daughter of the step-father and birth mother, the custom sentence appears immediately after that description and before the details of her baptism, which to me at least, makes the true position much clearer.

[LornaCraig]

Following on from my experiments yesterday (in a test project) I have just opened the same test project for another purpose and got an Exception report. This immediately reminded my of a problem another user had when upgrading from V6 to V7, where the problem was connected with step-family relationships.

This gedcom had been created in V7 but now V7 had to take 'special action' to load its own file! This is not a problem for me as it is only a test file and I don't normally explicitly set 'step' relationships.

Has the problem already been reported to Calico Pie?

Family Historian Exception Report - Thursday 11 Feb 2021
=========================================================

Lines marked "EXCLUDED:" indicate data which has not
been loaded, and explain why it wasn't loaded.

Indented lines marked "EXCLUDED BRANCH LINE:" indicate
data lines which are not necessarily invalid in
themselves but which have had to be excluded as a
consequence of excluding other lines.

Lines marked "INFO ONLY:" indicate data that has
been successfully loaded, but where special action
was needed to load it (e.g. GEDCOM errors detected
and automatically corrected by Family Historian).

---------------------------------------------------------

Record Type=Individual. Gedcom Id=I31. Record Number=31.
l.287 - EXCLUDED: invalid line : "1 _FAMC "
l.288 - EXCLUDED BRANCH LINE: : "2 _PEDI Step (father)"
l.289 - EXCLUDED BRANCH LINE: : "2 _PEDI Birth (mother)"

---------------------------------------------------------
The numeric portion of Gedcom Ids have been retained as Record Ids. Use these to match entries to records.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Helen: apologies, I seem to have accidentally edited your reply instead of replying separately to it! ! I will email you direct, to get the ticket number again.
Lorna.

[RS3100]

For what it's worth, I've just checked my file and have eight instances of "PEDI Step (father)" and "PEDI Birth (mother)", most of which existed prior to conversion from V6 to V7, and (touchwood) I have had no such issues.

[GeneSniper]

I take it this is something I should report to CP.

[LornaCraig]

The issue of the Exception report which I got (mentioned above) has now been added to a previous report about a similar issue.

However the issue about FH ignoring the 'step' relationship when your step-sister was linked to your father as his step-daughter, and displaying your step-sister as your half sister, should be reported.