Family Historian User Group

This follows from a thread in 'Thoughts on 2.3'
I ask that the default for the Marriage Status field in the Properties Dialog be 'Married'. It is not possible anyway to select Married from the drop down list as it is not included as an option. I have many situations where a spouse is known but no actual marriage event entered as a date/place has not been found. This leads to odd results in the new Narrative Reports as the sentence 'Jack married Jill' is not inserted. Further if there is a note about the spouse, this is quoted but looks odd as the the spouse's name does not appear.

ID:678

Agreed

Alasdair Kirk

After some experimentation it appears that the marriage status field does not have the effects on the narrative report you require.

The narrative report looks to use the presence of a marriage event to trigger the 'Jack married Jill' line.

I don't think Family Historian should produce a marriage event by default, this would create a marriage where you probably have no proof of a marriage existing. It is easy enough to add a blank marriage event if you require it.

Yes I agree that a marriage event can be added but it is more likely that our ancestors were married to their spouses than not so it seems reasonable this should be the default. But Family Historian is also inconsistent in the use of marriage status. If, for example, you ask for an Individual Summary Report for a person with a spouse but no marriage event entered, the report will include a section on Marriage and a Family Group Report will have sections on 'Husband' and 'Wife'. These clearly imply a Marriage Event where none has been entered.  

I agree that the Individual Summary Report and the Family Group Report have inconsistent wording where no marriage event exists, these probably need to be looked at.

As the Narrative Report stands the Marriage Status field appears to be irrelevant as to the displaying of the 'Jack married Jill' text, which is what you look to be trying to achieve. What you need is for a marriage event to be created automatically, presumably when adding or linking a spouse.

Adding an event like this automatically raises important questions about assuming things you don't know about. I suspect some users would not want such events created by default.

Approaching the problem you have from a different direction it may be better to change the Narrative Report to assume the couple were married (and display the 'Jack married Jill' text) unless you have specified a different Marriage Status such as unmarried. This would then mean that the narrative report takes some notice of the Marriage Status field, at the moment it appears to ignore it completely.