Adult child missing from IOS

A member was reviewing her IOS and noticed that one of her four children did not appear.

These are the circumstances of the missing child:

An adult living out of state

Was baptized

It is not known if the child's records were ever removed from the church rolls.

If a member has their name removed from the rolls shouldn't the parents' records still indicate that the child exists, even if the MRN is removed? in other words, shouldn't the MRN be deleted but not the child? The child still exists, and MLS allows non-member children to be listed as children so why would the child be completely erased?

EDIT: MLS just printed out the IOS summary and the child who was added is missing from the mother's IOS again, but does appear under the father's IOS. Any ideas what is going on here?

EDIT: And there is a glitch in MLS. I attempted to add the missing child back to the parent's record (the child shows up as a child of the husband but not the mother). When I attempt to commit the change I get the message that the child is already linked to the mother, but it cites a truncated version of the mother's name as the existing parent. Apparently when a member's name is too long weird things can happen.

Wow. What an interesting and bizarre problem. It sounds like you have tried to fix this solely through the mother's IOS, which makes sense. Given what you have tried, I would recommend trying to obtain the child's Membership record provided it still exists and trying a solution by correcting the child's record. If you are uncomfortable with temporarily requesting the record you could look up the child via lds.org's request record tool and it should tell which unit the record is located in currently. You could then work with that local clerk to update the record or at least to notify them of what you are trying to do.

mdyoung wrote:If you are uncomfortable with temporarily requesting the record...

Please don't request a membership record just to fix data like this. You could affect callings, home teaching statistics, etc.

mdyoung wrote:You could then work with that local clerk to update the record or at least to notify them of what you are trying to do.

Or could call the very helpful folks at the Global Service Center and have them fix it. It sounds like they may need to be involved anyway because this sounds like a database issue.

Please don't request a membership record just to fix data like this. You could affect callings, home teaching statistics, etc.

That is a good point and I had considered that. I suspect, if the record still exists, that it might be in the address unknown category or the activity of the child is doubtful due to aclawson's comment,

It is not known if the child's records were ever removed from the church rolls.

so I doubt it would effect callings and statistics though I apologize for my cavalier attitude.

I think mfmohlma is correct. It does sound like something better suited for the Global Service Center. Here is there contact information,

Member/Leader Unit (MLU) Support - local unit clerks and leaders contact for MLS problems and questions

by phone at 1-800-537-5932 (toll free in the US and Canada)
by phone at +1(801)240-3500 (in the Salt Lake City area, or outside the US and Canada)
by email at ​mlssupport@ldschurch.org