Terminating a marriage doesn't work

Member X has a non-member spouse, who passed away over a year ago. Said spouse still shows up as the current spouse. Member X recently went to the temple and was sealed to said spouse.

When I click on the member's record, the spouse is still there. If I were to attempt to terminate the marriage, it asks me for the termination date and reason. I see this noted on the record, but MLS 2.8.1 does not seem to make any attempt to actually process the death (there are other members in our ward with deceased, sealed spouses that do not show up under "spouse").

Someone put "(Deceased on <date>)" in the suffix field, to signify that the spouse has deceased. When I attempt to edit this, it allows me to remove this tag, but then when I hit close, exit the record, and go back in, it's back.

Not sure if I'm just missing something here. Bug in 2.8.1?

Going back through the help and training materials, it seems clear that the marriage should be terminated, as the spouse is deceased.

Hmm, maybe I found my own answer.

http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=489

Apparently this is now a feature - a member's deceased spouse shows as the current spouse as long as they do not remarry.

So now I wonder what the other people in the ward (with deceased spouses) really look like? I was *sure* that their deceased spouses didn't show...

The question is, how is the spouse showing? It may show when you look at their record, but it shouldn't be showing up in any ward list. Are the reports correct?

I would do two things (and in this order):

1. Edit the marriage information so that it contains the spouse's complete name (maiden name if appropriate), birth date, marriage date, and marriage place (city, county, state/province; no abbreviations), then do a Send/Receive Changes. After you get confirmation back that all of the above has been properly recorded at CHQ, then move on to the next step.

2. If you cannot successfully terminate the marriage when you navigate (from the menu bar) to Membership > Individual Record > selecting the members record > Current Spouse > Terminate Marriage link, then I would navigate (from the menu bar) to Membership > Records > Special Requests > then select the member's record and explain what you are trying to do and why. Follow that with a Send/Receive Changes and see if that corrects the situation after CHQ has had some time to process your request. Alternatively, you could create an MLS Message that includes all the relevant information (member's name, record number, what needs to be changed/fixed, etc.) and send it to Membership Support (i.e. set the Type of message to Membership instead of Finance or Stake).

If all goes well, the spouse should still show up on the member's record, but with the word "Deceased" preceding the spouse's membership/administrative record number. The word "Deceased" will also show on the member's IOS instead of "Yes" or "No" in the Current Spouse > Member field. If you navigate (from the menu bar) to Membership > Individual Record > select the members record > Current Spouse in the place for the spouse's Full Name, you should see something like this (with the appropriate name and date filled in, of course):

Full Name: John Doe (Deceased 31 Dec 2001)

It looks like all is well. I checked other widows/widowers and the behavior is consistent.

But it didn't use to be that way ... anyway, all is well.