Wife shows as head of household

I have an interesting situation. We recently received records of a husband and wife who are inactive. Both are baptized and confirmed, he is ordained a deacon. Under their family info, they show as married but no marriage date or location show up. The wife is showing as the head of household.

Any thoughts on why she shows as head of household?

A few possibilities come to mind (on the off chance you had not already enumerated them):
1) Perhaps she was a member before he was baptized, and when he was baptized he was added under her existing household;
2) Perhaps records were moved separately, and he was added under her existing household;
3) Perhaps when doing a move or some other operation, somebody hit the wrong button without realizing it;
4) Perhaps there might be something more complex going on, which the current (or perhaps former) bishop is likely aware of.

If such a similar situation showed up in my ward, I think I'd ask the bishop if he knew of of any reason the wife should remain the household and proceed on the answer to that question. I think I would also ask the bishop whether there is any reason I should not ask the members for a date and place of the marriage to get that entered on their records.

Generally the husband is automatically the head of household but sometimes it can get confused in situations like rmrichesjr described. But to correct the situation you simply go to the husband's profile in LCR, click the Household tab and click Split Household. Select the husband and make him into a new household. The after he is in his own household use the Add Household Members on the same tab to add the wife (and children if any) into his household.

EthanBratt wrote:Under their family info, they show as married but no marriage date or location show up.

That would be nice to have, but I'd be more concerned if they were not showing who they are married to. That would prevent the spouse from showing as "spouse" and not "other" (children).

Neither our nor the previous bishop knew why so I fixed it by splitting the household and adding the wife back to it. Simple enough. Thanks for the help.

What a horribly outdated term - I know it's likely to integrated into the system to easily remove, but it really needs to go away - or if kept the Head of Household should be Jane and John Doe

johnshaw wrote:or if kept the Head of Household should be Jane and John Doe

Head of Household in the membership system is the single record to which the rest of the family records are linked, so that if you do a family move, the system knows which records to move together.

I suppose it could be renamed Record to Which Other Members of the Family are Attached, or something more simple. I agree that Head of Household has a different meaning in the real world of families.

Maybe we should just go back to the old 8x5 cards and paper-clips - The paperclip could have a yellow post-it note with the family name on it

I always preferred the 80-column Hollerith cards. You could put them in any order you wished, and then just feed them to the printer. But I date myself (quite anciently) with that comment.

We always put sequence numbers in columns 73-80 of each card, so if you dropped the deck, it was easy to put the cards back in order.

drepouille wrote:We always put sequence numbers in columns 73-80 of each card, so if you dropped the deck, it was easy to put the cards back in order.

Alternatively, you could write a sequence number across the face of the card with a piece of charcoal from the cooking fire.

More seriously, my opinion is that if the Brethren believed the phrase "Head of Household" was outdated, it would have been eliminated or changed.

rmrichesjr wrote:More seriously, my opinion is that if the Brethren believed the phrase "Head of Household" was outdated, it would have been eliminated or changed.

I think it's more likely that a decision like that isn't made by the Brethren unless someone suggests it to them. I think it more likely that this scenario hasn't ever played out than that the 'Brethren' have actively reviewed the Database schema to make recommended changes to the DBA's and the developers on how they should match records.