None of your information about your family disappears from the FamilySearch Family Tree when you die

 

Sorry for the long blog post title but it is the only way I can say exactly what this post is about. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a unified, collaborative, and cooperative family tree. However, for basic privacy reasons information about living people added to the Family Tree is visible only to the person who adds (uploads, types in, etc.) the information. As soon as a person is marked deceased, all that information becomes visible and discoverable on the Family Tree. However, it is possible that more than one profile for a living person was created. In that case, only those copies of the person (each with a unique ID number) who marks their living copies as deceased triggers the ability of anyone to see that information. Obviously, as people mark their copy of the deceased person as deceased, multiple copies (duplicates) of the person will start to appear in the Family Tree. 

At no time does the death of an individual impact the information (data, entries, etc) in the Family Tree. Anyone, including the close relatives of the deceased can immediately see all marked duplicates and all of the information that anyone, including the deceased, added to the Family Tree. Just as I or anyone else can see, correct, and change the information about any of anybody's deceased ancestors. Don't worry about me jumping over and try to work on your family lines unless I happen to be related to you in some reasonable way. 

FamilySearch takes extraordinary efforts to preserve all the information on the Family Tree. 

If you are still uneasy about your own information being preserved, you should make sure all your information is entered into the Family Tree. If you have any qualms about your information's integrity or permanency on the Family Tree, then by all means keep a copy on your own desktop program or on another online family tree. 

For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as soon as the Ward Clerk in the ward where the person resides learns of his or her death, the Ward Clerk can mark them as deceased and within a few minutes the deceased person will show up on the Family Tree. 

Here is another twist to the problem. What if the spouse is relying on the dead person's login and password? The rule is everyone using the Family Tree should have their own login and password (i.e. be registered as an individual). If you want to work on your spouse's family, then get them to log on until the Family Tree shows the first dead people and then anyone, including the spouse, can work on the lines. 

Enough said.