Recording Deaths

Jean Shultz · July 24

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 · July 24

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 · July 24

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 · July 24

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 · July 24

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 · July 24

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 · July 24

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.

Sunshine Reinken Watson · July 28

Having separate constituent records for the spouses helps maintain the history of the deceased spouse's relationship with the organization as well as their other relationships, especially if that is extensive (such as board member constituent codes, education relationship records, business relationship records, memberships, event attendance, etc.). It may also help if you use NXT's online giving forms for tributes.

If they don't have a complex individual history on their record, it is easier to flip the name and other bio information on the record to the living spouse. But be careful to make sure that all of the information is correct and accounted for! I recommend taking screenshots of the records before changing things over just in case.

Jean Shultz · July 29

But they are both deceased. Let's say the husband is the "main" constituent, and the wife is the "sub" constituent, she doesn't have her own profile, she is added to his. She passes away and I mark her deceased. Nothing happens. Now the husband is deceased. I mark him as such and now RE has automatically created the already deceased wife, her own profile. I don't understand why it does that. It doesn't make sense to me.

Elizabeth Johnson · July 29

Hi @Jean Shultz, I'm curious if you are doing this work in the web view (wv) or database view (dbv).

I don't do my deceased work in the wv as it doesn't behave the way I would like it to based on the Business Rules I have set up. Great that @JoAnn Strommen shared those with you already. It has admittedly been a while since I've tried.

I like how you have defined "main" constituent, and the "sub" constituent, for your org.

At our org I have defined them as Record Holder (RH) and Relationship records.

Recording Deaths

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