Membership Error

We have a member who is married to a member - who is a convert.

Within their membership record it shows for each of them that although they are married to each other, the relationship says SELF for him and under Household Members, with her under relationship it says OTHER. The same applies to her records as well.

This the case within LDS Tools as well.

This is them quite a bit of grief as this is how it appears within LDS Tools.

What can we do to resolve this?

Terry Ritchie
Stake Clerk Bow River Stake - Calgary Canada

The marriage recorded in their records is probably not to each other. The easiest solution is probably going to be to contact the Global Service Center and have them clean up the error.

See the following forum threads for related discussion that may be helpful:
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 1&p=178879
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 12#p178118

I'm not sure if it's still true, but at one time you'd have to pull her into her own household and then move her back. Back then, the relationship was calculated at the time she was moved into the household, and if the marriage want yet recorded, then it would be "other".

Before I fully review - forgive me, I am new to this role - how do I go about contacting the Global Service Center? Is there a phone number you might be able to offer?

See Global Service Center in the Help Center. You can also send a Special Request in MLS (Membership > Records > Special Request from the menu).

I struggled with a similar problem in our ward this weekend - took me about an hour to finally resolve it. We have two members married to each other, but he was listed as married to a nonmember of the same name and she was listed as married to him. She showed up as "Other" in his household. Several attempts to remove her from the household and add her back in failed - she was always added back in as "other" no matter what I tried.

In desperation, I printed a copy of their membership records to make sure I had all the info at hand, then:
1. I removed her from the household and made her her own head of house.
2. I cancelled the marriage on his record.
3. I cancelled the marriage on her record (step 2 did nothing to her record as she was not the "spouse" linked in his marriage information).
4. I recorded the marriage again on his record with all the information from the printout and selected her as the spouse.

That fixed everything. I checked and we don't have an orphan nonmember record for someone with the same name as her in MLS so it appears to be good now.

davesudweeks wrote:2. I cancelled the marriage on his record.
3. I cancelled the marriage on her record (step 2 did nothing to her record as she was not the "spouse" linked in his marriage information).
4. I recorded the marriage again on his record with all the information from the printout and selected her as the spouse.

This is not recommended. While you don't see it on our side, in CMIS it looks like a second marriage. It is preferable to call support and have them fix any linking errors.

But there is no such issue with Households, so we can remove her from the household and add her back in to see if it decides to behave. It's possible that someone added her to the household before the marriage "took".

davesudweeks wrote: 2. I cancelled the marriage on his record.
3. I cancelled the marriage on her record (step 2 did nothing to her record as she was not the "spouse" linked in his marriage information).

The only problem with this is that I believe that this leaves 1 or 2 garbage marriage records in the system.
I know that the UI doesn't show that or give any good ways to solve this problem for the clerks. We've discussed this a lot and are trying to work with the business side to allow this to be fixed better.

If you want to PM the people you did this for I can double check about the extra marriage records.

Thanks all. I think I will call GSC and see if they can help us through this. These folks have been patient. But if we don't resolve this properly, could test their patience.

jonesrk wrote:The only problem with this is that I believe that this leaves 1 or 2 garbage marriage records in the system.
I know that the UI doesn't show that or give any good ways to solve this problem for the clerks. We've discussed this a lot and are trying to work with the business side to allow this to be fixed better.

If you want to PM the people you did this for I can double check about the extra marriage records.

Challenge accepted. jonesrk, I sent you some information via Teams.

This did create an additional marriage record.

When he was baptized, a "non-member" record was created to record the marriage to his wife. There is a now-terminated marriage linked to that non-member record.

When his wife was baptized, a new record was created for her and you created a marriage linked to her actual membership record.

His record looks something like this:

John Doe married non-member Jane Doe on marriage date, marriage terminated last Sunday
John Doe married member Jane Doe on same marriage date, marriage not terminated

My apologies - I did not see anything amiss on our side in MLS or in LCR. A previous clerk requested assistance through MLS on fixing this problem and the only advice was "remove her and re-add her" but that never worked so he gave up. Perhaps the special request reply should include something like, "let us know if this does not work."

davesudweeks wrote:My apologies - I did not see anything amiss on our side in MLS or in LCR. A previous clerk requested assistance through MLS on fixing this problem and the only advice was "remove her and re-add her" but that never worked so he gave up. Perhaps the special request reply should include something like, "let us know if this does not work."

No apology necessary. This is one situation where we know that the tools don't make it easy for you to get things correct on the record.