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Dissolve households when one member dies?

Margaret Matteson

I'd love to get perspective from others on this. I'm weighing the pros and cons of dissolving households when one member dies. At my previous org, we did not dissolve the household but we did edit the household name to indicate that one member was deceased (i.e., "John (Deceased) and Jane Smith"). The spouse relationship remained unless the spouse remarried at some point (and then it would be changed to Former Spouse or something like that in the Relationships tab). At my current org, we have been dissolving the household and undoing the Spouse relationship.

How do you handle this at your org? How is it working for you? Any particular caveats with either approach?

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Comments

Lisa Saneda

I always dissolve the household IF it is just husband and wife. If there are other people living in that household, do not dissolve. I always keep in mind that a “household” is 2 or more people living at the same address.

Always change the 2nd person on the household to the primary when deceasing someone.

Chris Nungesser

I was in favor of the dissolving households approach. It seemed cleaner. But I have flipped that opinion as I was thinking through different scenarios, such as creating the donor rolls for our annual report.

For our donor rolls, we do not list everyone individually. We list a household together and we list them by the name they prefer to be recognized as. So John Smith and Jill Smith might be Jill and John Smith or maybe they prefer The Smith Family or whatever - you get it. If one of them passes away during the year (but they gave a contribution, so they should appear in the donor roll), if that happens, then I keep them in the household together because it keeps them tethered to each other, so to speak. If I dissolve the household, then I might have John Smith and Jill Smith both appear in the donor roll, but separately. And for us, we don't want that second outcome.

We're still working through our processes. Like what do to if John Smith passes and then Jill Smith later remarries. Does the new spouse enter the household and John stay? Or does he get removed then? Right now, we are keeping him in the household even then, though he is marked deceased, of course. But that isn't set in stone as we continue to work through the implications of that choice.

Gail Vincent

I've been leaving the household intact but changing the relationships to “Deceased Spouse/Widow” or similar. We change the first names of deceased constituents to all caps, and reflect it in the household name as “JOHN and Mary Smith.”