Adopted Children

[Miss Myrtle]

When my grandmother divorced her first husband and remarried, her second husband legally adopted my mother. Other than creating an event for the adoption, do I leave my mom only under her birth parents, or do I duplicate her and show her as adopted under her mom's second marriage family?

[Historyscape]

You don't have to duplicate her. You can add a second set of parents and mark the Child Status as adopted. However, only do this if you really want to record this in your database. If you publish information from your database - on Ancestry or elsewhere - the preferred set of parents can get muddled up and it only takes one family historian copying your information and putting the adoptive father down as the biological father for information to get garbled in a way you can't necessarily get corrected.

[Miss Myrtle]

You don't have to duplicate her. You can add a second set of parents and mark the Child Status as adopted. However, only do this if you really want to record this in your database. If you publish information from your database - on Ancestry or elsewhere - the preferred set of parents can get muddled up and it only takes one family historian copying your information and putting the adoptive father down as the biological father for information to get garbled in a way you can't necessarily get corrected.

Okay thanks. I think I'll just leave her with her birth parents.

[Bob White]

Genealogy 101! The biological parents are the parents irregardless of subsequent divorces, marriages, etc, Just give your grandmother an Additional Spouse and leave mother with her biological parents. You will see other opinions posted here; there are many already posted.

[Miss Myrtle]

Genealogy 101! The biological parents are the parents irregardless of subsequent divorces, marriages, etc, Just give your grandmother an Additional Spouse and leave mother with her biological parents. You will see other opinions posted here; there are many already posted.

Yep, I totally agree with that. I have added the adopted tag to my mom, but it doesn't indicate the relationship.

[Bob White]

Actually, I'm like your mom. My mother divorced my bio father when I was still in diapers. She remarried when I was five year old. Second husband adopted me about a year after that. He is just shown as one of her three spouses. In the Misc. Notes for her, I just have a paragraph detailing the relative information about the adoption. (P.S., I don't use tags as I think they are too much work for very little help. I don't use sources due to the way reports handle them. All of my source information is in various Notes fields.)

[Miss Myrtle]

Thanks. That’s basically how I ended up setting it up and just putting the information into her notes