Missing Widows

We have an interesting situation with our ward membership records and I don't know how to start fixing it. We ran a custom report in LCR looking for widows (Marriage Status is Widowed). 7 people we know are widowed do not appear on the list. We carefully went through the membership records for each of them, and this is what we found:

• One is listed as still alive.

• In two of them, no marriage (or subsequent death) was ever recorded.

• In four of them, the spouse's death was recorded and his name appears as "Deceased" in the survivor's record.

We can deal with the first two situations. It's the last one we can't figure out. With the spouses' deaths recorded and showing in the individual member record, why wouldn't that same individual appear in the custom report?

I'd compare the last one with one that does show up in the report. It's been awhile since I'd done membership records but having the spouse's name show as "Deceased" doesn't seem right. I'm thinking a prior clerk fudged the situation and the record is not correct. It's also possible that the way the death of a spouse has changed over the years and these 4 are from a prior time.

Either way, I'd be careful about how you go about fixing these to avoid creating a false history. (Like trying to fix a marriage by divorcing them and re-marrying them.) You may not see it, but the records people in SLC can. In that situation, contact support and have them fix it.

having the spouse's name show as "Deceased" doesn't seem right

Sorry, that was poorly phrased on my part. What it says under the member's Family tab is this (assuming I were the dead spouse):

Spouse (Deceased)
Michael Callaghan

So, the system knows the spouse is deceased, but the member doesn't show up as "widowed."

I'm not sure where the "widowed" status comes from. Usually when a non-member spouse dies, the clerk terminates the marriage of the member, and when it asks for a reason, it's "death". I'm not sure if that would (or always has) translated to "widowed", or if it's simply recorded as a type of divorce. That would be different from the death of a member spouse where the death is recorded on the record of the person who died. You might check the sealing status to see if that gives a clue. I'm wondering if the "widowed" status is dependent on how the death was recorded or the status at the time.

Bottom line, without knowing how that widowed status comes about, it's hard to know how dependable it is. (Just like an accurate list of YSA is dependent on recording the marriage of inactive singles)

Thinking about this some more, the only time I remember seeing a prior spouse named is if the "Sealed to prior spouse" flag is set. It's simply noting who the member is sealed to.

It's possible that the couple got a civil divorce prior to the spouse's death. At which point, the person would be a divorcee, not a widow. (Some couples get a divorce to avoid ruinous medical bills from leaving the surviving spouse with nothing.

The one I'm looking at right now... they were definitely sealed. Her member record has all the pertinent details. They definitely did not get divorced prior to his death, which was pretty sudden. All the rest of the info is correct, but she and the others don't show as being "widowed." It's very odd. I'm thinking we may need to call the help desk.

As a recent widow, who was married for time "and eternity(!)", learning that it is church policy that "the clerk terminates the marriage of the member ... when it asks for a reason, it's "death" " -- is SO problematic for me. This is a sore point for so many of us widows who still believe ourselves married. For the record, though i am fully active, I chose to remove my email address from my profile, so that I would no longer receive Singles announcements. (Each one was salt on a wound.) I WISH the Church could find a different accounting method than "terminating [an eternal] marriage."

MLE6 wrote: Fri May 12, 2023 1:46 pm As a recent widow, who was married for time "and eternity(!)", learning that it is church policy that "the clerk terminates the marriage of the member ... when it asks for a reason, it's "death" " -- is SO problematic for me.

If a member dies, the clerk simply records the death.

The instruction you are referring to only applies when a non-member spouse dies. Since they are a non-member, there is no membership record to record the death on. As I'm sure you're aware, if they are not sealed, then the marriage does in fact terminate on death.

MLE6 wrote: Fri May 12, 2023 1:46 pm I WISH the Church could find a different accounting method than "terminating [an eternal] marriage."

The Church does not "terminate" an eternal marriage. When the husband or wife of a sealed couple dies, the clerk records the death date on that individual's record. The membership record of the surviving spouse still shows Sealed to Spouse, with all of the associated information such as date sealed and temple.