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Question:My husbands parents are divorced and re-married. I would like to do a family tree and not sure how to handle that. Where do I insert them so that it makes sense? And step sister?
Also, he has an older half brother that was adopted by his father, so is that put under sibling like normal?


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: My husbands parents are divorced and re-married. I would like to do a family tree and not sure how to handle that. Where do I insert them so that it makes sense? And step sister?
Also, he has an older half brother that was adopted by his father, so is that put under sibling like normal?

What are commonly referred to as step parents are actually multiple spouses of the same person. How it is represented (or IF it is represented) depends on what kind of tree you have.

If it is an ancestor tree, then the "step-parents" are not included at all because there is no relationship to the person at the bottom of the tree. Only direct blood relatives are included.

If it were a descendant tree, then depending on whether the source of the tree was on your husband's father side or mother's side makes a difference. If the descendant tree stared with an ancestor on your husband's father's side, then your husband's father is shown with two wives. The children he has with each wife is shown descending from the wife. Note that here, the second husband of his mother is not shows because they have no relation to the decendancy on the father's side.

Likewise, if the decendant tree was on your husband's mother's side, then his mother would show two spouses, and children from each spouse would be shown decending from the appropriate spouse. In this case, his father's second wife would not appear in the tree.

Remember, a descendant tree shows descendants (working past to present) from a single individual from the past and only their descendants and the descendant's spouses to show parentage. An ancestor tree starts with a person and works backwards in time only showing direct blood ancestors and their spouse related to the line.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. are only shown on descendant trees. Also, your husband only has one ancestor tree starting with him. BUT, can be part of multiple descendant trees that end with him. Two (one for each parent), four (one for each grandparent), eight (one for each great grandparent), etc.

You don't "include step parents" per se. Instead, you attach spouses of parents as separate marriages. Then you include children for each marriage. When the program calculates relationship, it will read children with only one common parent as half-sibs, and the children of a new spouse with no blood relationship to other parent as your step brothers/sisters.

Most of us don't do family trees per se. We have either pedigree charts, which look like the ones dog and horse breeders use (one individual to the left, his/her 2 parents next, the 4 grandparents, the 8 great grandparents), or Family Group Sheets. FGSs show the man, woman and all of their children. If you have a man who had children by two wives and three casual affairs, you'd have 5 FGSs for him.

Well technically you'd draw a line from that man to his 2nd spouse's name and a line from HER to her child (even though he adopted him (putting that adopted name in parentheses). It seems that those computer genealogy programs can't add this set-up in, so I say add it by hand after printing.
You might get an idea by going to the library and looking at some old genealogy charts for ideas.