* Facts after death

[vyh3]

How do people include facts that are recorded in a source after a person has died?

The sort of thing I'm thinking about is when someone gets married then their father's occupation may well be on the marriage certificate even if the father is dead. Occupation is a 'life' time frame fact. What I need (I think) is a post-death time frame fact. I could create a new post-death fact label but as this must be a relatively common occurrence I'm wondering if there is a better way of approaching it.

Ideally I'd like to be able to change a particular fact for a person to post-death but I can't see a way of doing this.

[Valkrider]

Others may have a different point of view but I don't let it bother me. I have many facts that occurred after death for some of my ancestors in exactly the same way that you have outlined. I record whatever is in the fact record.

[LornaCraig]

I definitely do not create a special post-death fact for occupation. That would suggest that the individual had a particular occupation after they had died! The point is that at some time after they died someone else recorded what their occupation had been while they were alive. If all you know is that a marriage certificate says that the bride's father is deceased but was a butcher, create an occupation fact for 'butcher' but don't date the fact. Cite the daughter's marriage certificate as the source, and (optionally) in the 'Where within Source' field write 'Bride's late father's occupation'.

If you happen to know from other sources that he was a butcher for his entire working life, you can just have one occupation fact (undated) and cite all the sources against that fact. You can always add a note to explain that multiple sources with various dates give the same information.

[tatewise]

Yes, the date of a Source document is not necessarily the date of every fact it provides.

An extreme example is that a Death Certificate may give the Date and Place of Birth.
You would not create a post-death Birth event to record that fact, but simply add a Citation to the Birth event for that Death Certificate source.

If a Marriage Certificate says the father is deceased and gives his occupation, then that gives rise to two facts; namely a Death event and an Occupation attribute.
If there is no other date information then you could set the Date of both facts to Before the date of the marriage.
But if the Date of Death is already known then the Death event will just cite the Marriage Certificate, and the Occupation attribute Date would say Before the date of death or left blank.

I believe you use Ancestral Sources, and in its Marriage capture dialogue on the Parents tab there are options to indicate a Deceased parent and optionally record a Death event and Occupation attribute.

[vyh3]

<<'don't date the fact'>>

That never occurred to me! I think that's a good solution as it allows me to record the occupation and cite where it's recorded without it mucking up any time line facts. Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

I gave the example of occupation of a deceased father on a marriage certificate because I thought that was a relatively common occurrence that everyone could relate to. However, the occupation that was particularly annoying me was on a Scottish death registration where father's name and occupation is recorded. As the person dying was in her eighties it made it appear that father was still alive some 50 years after has actual death! Mustn't complain though. Discovering the Scottish connection and the wealth of information on their death registrations has been wonderful for sorting out my family history around the late 18th and early 19th centuries.