What is the proper use of Marriage End Date on Wikitree?

Question

I think I know the answer, I am just fishing for any nuances that I may not have considered.  This is more of a thought exercise I suppose.

John Smith marries Jane Brown.  Jane dies.  Does John's marriage end on the date of Jane's death?  If so, should we record this date as the Marriage End Date on Wikitree?

Is there a distinction between Divorce and Death for the End of Marriage Date?  

It is often interesting to see the time between a death of one spouse and the marriage of a second spouse.

Comments

Great question. I just searched thru both help categories and help index and found no explanation for the Marriage End Date.  As others have said, I have only used it to record a documented divorce.

Answer 1

Hi Michael,

I believe that if death is being considered as an additional marriage end y date then it should only be used in the case of spousal death before remarriage. This way like it has been said, it would account for easier access to time between marriages and new family transitions. It can be as important a part of my tree as age between siblings to understanding how they might have interacted. These time ranges would have definitely impacted the feelings each member of the family had for one another for better or worse.

I have never thought about this for my own trees but think that once this is ironed out and decided, I will implement in my tree.

Mike

Comments

For our non-living ancestors, having the date of death for the (late) wife on both her profile and as a marriage end date that shows on the husband's profile (and vice versa) would be convenient for genealogists, especially in the days when men and women remarried quickly and had children by most all of their spouses.  However, if a help section is added, I would recommend a line that clearly leaves the decision whether or not to include the date of death as the marriage end date to widowed WikiTree members.  Cheers, Liz (divorced once, widowed twice - only one marriage has an end date)

Answer 2

Great question, Michael.  I had not thought of asking it, but do remember wondering a little about it.  I have done it in the case of divorce, but not in the case of death.  I'm anxious to see the correct answer here.

Thank you for asking that!

Answer 3

Great question and points Michael.  It excercised my thoughts.

I always thought the marriage end date was for divorce only, and had not concidered using it upon death.  When I see that info filled in for a profile I think divorce.

There are definately interesting things to deduce from the dates.  If the end of marriage field was to be filled in with death date I feel it would have to be indicated very clearly somehow, more so than just in the biography.  

Then another thought... we don't want to end up having every single marriage end date filled in for every profile with death dates do we?  Where would lines be drawn?

Again, great question.  Sparks thought.

Comments

Robert, I agree that we need not fill in every death date. I had not considered that.

I just read a comment on the internet about "Until death do us part."  So it would seem the marriage does end with death and then one is a Widower or Widow.

In the case of my Grandfather, he was married three times with the death of the first two spouses.  The third he divorced.  (I think my Mom {from second wife} may have had something to do with that!)

The dates are interesting to timeline in many cases. Birth of a child between marriages, fast second marriages out of need for support of young children, overlapping marriages. It all helps to build a profile on the person in question.

Use for Divorce then, yes.  

But what about Death? Wikitree does not produce timelines, which are helpful.  So documentation of the Spouse's death is also documentation of the Marriage End Date. But you have to look back and forth from the profile in question to the profile of the spouse and/or create a timeline.

So perhaps our answers is:

Option one: Upon Death, Leave it blank and document in the profile.

Option two: Complete only in cases multiple marriages as to distinguish the time between marriages.

Option three: Only for Divorce. Build your own timeline.

Other?

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I have attended weddings where the participants did not say "till death do us part".  They expressed the "eternity" theme.  I'm sure it doesn't hold much legal wheight, but it is clear some would not have a marriage end date if they were to manage their own profiles.  

My grandparents were born one year apart, married young, died one year apart, and are burried side-by-side under a shared stone.  It doesn't seem right to break up their bios with a marriage end date.  I'm sure they would not wish it.

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I'm not sure which of the options you presented is best.  I agree with your clarification.

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People are so messy.  My grandfather was married three times, divorced or sperated from his third wife.  He chose to be burried with his second wife, my grandmother.  So apparently she was his "chosen" wife.

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Thinking some more about this, I think we need another field in the marriage record to use for explanation of marriage end date.  We have a "place" field accompanying all the other dates - birth, death, and marriage.  If we had a text field - maybe call it "cause" accompanying marriage end date, then it could be used for something like "by divorce in City,State" (giving divorce location) or "upon death of xxxx" where "xxxx" is name or WikiTree ID of the person.

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I like that idea a lot Gaile.

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Michael,

I'm not sure why you call your grandfather's situation "messy".  Not everyone is fortunate enough to make the right choice the first time ... or even the second or third or whatever time.  Many of us have motives driving our decisions that we are not even aware of at the time.  You might call it a hidden agenda that is hidden even from the person who has it!  I've seen lots more complex situations, not the least of which is my own.  I was married very young, divorced 20 years later, then was single for 25 years before getting married again in 2007.  I would say that I made a mistake, tried very long and hard to make it work before giving up.  Before getting married the second time, I used to say I was a slow learner but at least I *did* learn not to repeat the mistake.  This time, however, I definitely made a good choice.  Although others might call it messy, it feels very normal and natural to me.

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Thanks Gaile, I have the email version of this so I will have it.

I say "messy" only to highlight that the simple idea of Birth Marriage Death is not the norm.  People are human and make human choices and live human lives.  My family tree is full of these type of choices, it is norm.  Lives are complex and thus "messy".  There is no "Clean" path. If there was, genealogy would not be so fun, interesting and rewarding.  The "messyness" brings out the humanity and tells the stories of our families lives.

My mom had a child at 17, my half brother, who died in 2006 after a life of drug abuse.  Not the "ideal" but all too common a story for many.  She, herself, had a much older half-sibling from her father's first marriage.  In fact, as I look through my tree, I rarely find, simple Birth, Marriage, Death.

Thus the questions about what is proper documentation and how it translates into Wikitree's system of documentation.

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Thank you for sharing that story Gaile.

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Gaile has a great Idea.  (I was going to suggest the same thing, so naturally, I like it.) As expressed in the entire thread, the Marriage End Date can be useful for many reasons, but right now, if it is used for the death of a spouse, you don't know that unless you flip back to the profile.  Adding the reason would be very helpful, but I'm not sure how easy it would be for the database managers to insert.

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Vic,

In terms of development effort, three things have to be done to accomplish this:

1. The database table needs a new field added and any stored procedures (those are like formulas used on data) that are affected need to have the new field added to them.
2. The profile display and editing pages need to have the new field inserted on them.
3. The software that processes changes made on the editing page needs to add writing the value of the new field to the database to the other things it already writes to the database.

It's not a lot of work to do, as changes go, but I believe the team has a very long list of tasks awaiting attention that would be higher priority, so I wouldn't expect it to happen very quickly.

THANX!

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I put in a date of death as end of marriage a few months ago because I was new to WikiTree and it seemed logical at the time. And I asked about it, but the only reply was something on the order of "That's just the way it is." I changed it back, but you'll find my query on my grandmother's profile (Perkins-5178). She died in in 1967 and he in 1972, without remarrying. I'd probably been thinking of the Wikipedia format, where they normally describe a marriage like this:

Article on Bob Hope (1903–2003):

 

Spouse(s)	Grace Louise Troxell (1933–1934) Dolores Hope (1934–2003; his death)

It's interesting to know that Bob Hope first married when he was 30, divorced (presumably) the next year,  and within months married the woman he remained with for life.

So I think there may be an option 4, which is to extend the field on WikiTree (you can only type in a date) so you can add "her death" or add check boxes for

[ ] divorce

[ ] his death

[x] her death

I would also like to expand the date check boxes with a comment or note field to distinguish between wild guesses and near estimates, such as a baptismal date for a birth date or a funeral date for a death. Only one of "by this date" or "after this date" seems insufficient. Yes, I know I can put it in the bio. I'd rather put it where people would be looking for it. Finally, I'd like to see a location when I search names so I don't have to check all 600 Jane Williames. But that's a discussion for another thread . . .

For now, I'll follow Chris Hoyt's suggestion below.

Answer 4

I use it both to document divorce and use the death date of a spouse, if there is a subsequent marriage.

Comments

Well no "Official" answer but I think Chris's comment sums up our discussion nicely. I think this is the most reasonable approach given what we know.

Answer 5

In my *new experience* with Wikitree, I have found that in many, many cases there are multiple marriages of both widows & widowers.  When the man dies before his wife, and she is beyond child bearing years, having the death date of the spouse can be optional; but if the woman is still within her child bearing years, it is just another step in putting together the 'entire' One World tree.  After sourcing each marriage to be valid, putting in death dates, not only tells us what order who was married to who, it also allows us to validate that we have the multitudes of children that one man might have.  My last encounter was a man with 22 children (all sourced), but with 4 wives & no sources for 3 of the marriages - all of child bearing age, and previous researchers did not have the children all correctly linked to the correct Mother, as the next wife assumed motherhood for her step-child.  Anther with 24 children & three wives, showed a history of him losing his bride each time to childbirth.  Death itself is part of every families tale.

Answer 6

One of the few times in genealogy I would say KISS - Keep it simple..

End of marriage is just divorce

If you would like to have the time period between the wife/husband died and remarriage you already have that time in WIkitree so don't store it twice it just adds confusion... 

As we have a SQL database storing the data I guess its 2 lines of coding for Chris to also display that date if we would like to have it....

 

Answer 7

It would might be different for some (IIRC, Latter Days Saints believe that you stay married in the hereafter), but the usual vows that most people take are of the form "till death do you part", so I'd say that it's an automatic end date, if the marriage wasn't dissolved earlier.

It would depend how it was handled in the software, I suppose - does the setup at the moment treat the death of one spouse as the end of the marriage for "Married 1835-1901" type events if there is no earlier dissolution of the marriage?