How do you handle unmarried couples with children

Question

I have an ancestor who married and had three children. After the third child was born, he left the family and moved to another state. While there, he "married" another woman. (The marriage was never legal. He lied to her. She found out when he died and his estate went to his legal spouse.)

Would I list the woman as his spouse, even though they never married?

She later married another man and they were married for 60 years. So, I can certainly create profiles for her and her family. I'm just not sure how to handle the relationship she had with the ancestor. Or the child that came from that relationship.

Comments

You say they "married" but it wasn't legal.  Did they actually go through a marriage ceremony?  Are there records of this bigamous union?  If she thought they were married, and it later was proven to not be so, I would set them as spouses.

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When she married Charlie Davis, she put her legal name as Elizabeth L. Burns, so she clearly THOUGHT she was legally married. I've also verified with her granddaughter that she didn't know she wasn't legally married until he died and she applied for his estate.

I do not know if they went through a marriage ceremony, but I suspect that they must have for her to believe it was legal. There are no records (that I have found) that document the relationship.

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Given the circumstances, I would treat these people as married.

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Thanks to all of you for your answers and comments. They were most helpful. Now I need to decide if I call her a spouse or not.

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Here is a famous profile see Thomas Edward (Lawrence) Shaw CB DSO (1888-1935) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree his parents were not married, and you can see how this issue was dealt with on this profile,. Although this example may not be entirely relevant to the profile you are working on

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@ Paul -- pretty much any marriage ceremony must have been between 1940 (still single, living in her father's household in Oregon) and 1948 (living as wife of, in California), probably earlier if they had children before 1948.  

I would definitely mark them as spouses, with an explanation in the  biography text that the marriage was later discovered as not legal.

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Change the "between 1940 and 1948" to "between 1946 and 1948", as she was at school in Oregon in 1946.

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Thank you!

Answer 1

It is not necessary for parents to be marked as married for them to be attached as mother and father to a child.  If you don't attach them as spouses, it is certainly worth mentioning their relationship in the Biography section.  You have unlimited space to explain the details that don't fit the pre-defined categories.  This is especially useful in families that have interesting martial stories.

Answer 2

Paul, in case you haven't seen it (and I don't see it mentioned here so far), there was just a discussion about that question:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1227574/why-is-there-not-a-couple-did-not-marry-option

Comments

Thank you so much. I read that entire thread as well as the one linked in it. It's certainly a controversial subject.

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I think there is a difference between a couple that did not marry, and  knew they had never married, and a couple where at least one party fully believed they WERE married.   A bigamous marriage was still a marriage, even if later proved not legal.