Convert Baptism - Married couples

A convert was baptized recently and her membership records does not indicated she is married to her spouse in the same household. I understand you can’t be baptized unless you are legally married so was this an oversight in the paperwork or during entry? Does the baptism paperwork include spouse membership information also so when being entered it should show up as a household married couple? Any other possible reasons besides paperwork or data entry error? They weren’t baptized together and the husband has been a member for about ten years.

You will probably have to check with the missionaries. I love our missionaries, but sometimes they are not very careful with details (like birth dates, MRNs, etc) when filling out the paperwork.

The missionaries are supposed to leave a copy of the new member record they fill out and turn in to the mission office so that would be the place I would start. Then it may be as simple as making sure the marriage is properly recorded on both records and moving her into her husband's household. If she is showing as an "Other" member of the household, you would move her out of the household and then move her back in and the system should put her in the proper position.

cchang wrote:Any other possible reasons besides paperwork or data entry error? They weren’t baptized together and the husband has been a member for about ten years.

It's possible they had a problem recording the marriage to an existing member. There's been a few posts here about problems caused when a non-member spouse changes status.

I'd contact support and let them fix it. There's nothing you can do without recording a false divorce on the member spouse. And, I'm not sure what the missionaries can and can't do. If they didn't do it right the first time, I'm not real hopeful about the second.

I concur with Russelhltn on not recording a divorce and then re-recording the marriage - been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Moving her out of the household will not record a divorce. If she is showing as an "other" member of the household and her marriage information appears correct, moving her out (to another household or as a head of her own household in your unit) and then back in will sometimes fix it. If it doesn't then it is time to get support involved because they will likely have to apply the fix.

Moving the spouse out and back in has always been the first suggestion from support when we have reported a spouse who shows as "other." This is why I would try it first and if it doesn't work you can report you already tried that.

Just for clarification, there may be two issues here. If the new member's record doesn't show any marriage at all, that needs to be fixed first. And that would be a call to support. (I don't think you can record a member marriage to someone who is already married. You can try.)

If the problem is that she does show as married, but she's showing as a "other" in the household, then you can try moving her into her own household and then back in. If that fails, then you're back to calling support. (The marriage records are not cross-linked so the system isn't recognizing the record added to the household as the spouse.)