Recording Deaths

Jean Shultz

I think it's stupid to separate a husband and a wife who are both deceased into 2 separate contestants. Who thought this was a good idea?

Dariel Dixon

What do you mean? Why is it stupid? These decisions are based on your organization's policies and procedures, not the system itself, unless there's a limitation that you haven't mentioned.

It's important to have a policy for deceasing constituents, and when to create new constituents for spouses and when not to. There needs to be a plan in place for good data hygiene and to not create duplicates in the future.

Jean Shultz

I'm going through and trying to clean up the data base. I started with constituent number 1. I'm on number 49 now. The wife is the main constituent, and her husband is added as a relationship. He's deceased and has been, which was put in many years ago. Now that she has passed away, RE now splits them up as 2 separate constituents. RE use to never do that. Now I have to go back in and fill out the husband's information, because it looks like a blank profile now and that I'm not doing my job on keeping the profile's update.

JoAnn Strommen

Were they both living or one living when two separate records were created? (We have some instances of that.)

Or did your org create a unique procedure to do so when both deceased? Wow. LOL

Jean Shultz

There is a main profile and then what I call the "sub" profile, that the spouse is usually on. Let's say sub profile is deceased and has been for some time. Now the main constituent is deceased and I'm updating their profile to reflect that. RE is now making that into 2 separate constituent profiles. It used to not do that.

JoAnn Strommen

Odd, my reply didn't post through quickly. I would look at your business rules. Wondering if someone checked the top box. If spouse box is checked on relationship record I can see where RE might create the record.

Jean Shultz

Great! Thank you for that, JoAnn! I will have the Admin take a look at it and see if it's something they accidently changed on their end.