How to Connect to a Family Member’s Tree

FamilySearch’s Family Treeis all about discovering and making connections. Many people on FamilySearch find these connections by uncovering records and finding new ancestors or finding new information others have posted. But you can also make connections to your living family on FamilySearch—especially as it grows!

When you add new members to your family, such as spouses, in-laws, stepparents, etc.,these new additions can come with their own separate family trees. Connecting to the tree information for living family members on the FamilySearch Family Tree isn’t difficult—but it does require a little different approach.

Protecting the Privacy of Living Family Members

FamilySearch Family Tree is a shared, public tree. Information about deceased relatives can be seen by anyone who searches for that relative on FamilySearch. To protect privacy, any information about living people on the Family Tree can only be seen by the person who entered it, in his or her private space.

As an example, I entered my husband, children, and parents on my family tree.Nobody else can see the information I entered because they are all living.

Information added to a living relative’s profile will only become public after he or she is marked as deceased. At that time, duplicate profiles may appear and can be merged to group that person’s information into one shared profile.

This means that if my siblings want to see our parents (who are living) on their own tree, they have to enter our parents themselves.

Connecting Trees of Living People

Because of this respect for privacy, connecting to information in the tree about your spouse or other living family members works a little differently than connecting to deceased ancestors in your direct line. The key is adding information about your living relatives until you can connect to the profile for a deceased person.

Below is an example of how to connect a spouse’s tree—but the steps would work for connecting to the tree information for any living person.

1) From the Family Tree screen, find the place you want to add a living relative.

In this example, I want to connect Heather to her living spouse, John, so I can see his family line that stretches back many generations. So I navigate to Heather’s profile in my Family Tree.

Screenshot of a tree view on FamilySearch.

2) Add information about the living relative.

To do this for John, I start by clicking Add Spouse next to Heather’s name.(If the option to add a relative doesn’t appear on the tree view, I can also add family members on Heather’s person page and then come back to the Tree.)

Screenshot showing add spouse button on FamilySearch.

I then fill in basic information about him and click Next. On the summary screen that appears, I click Create Person to add John to my tree view. On Heather’s family tree, John will now appear as her husband.

Screenshot showing how to add information about a living relative.

Screenshot showing how to create a new person in the Family Tree.

Remember that even though John can already see his information in his own tree view, creating a duplicate profile is necessary because living information is not shared. The record of John I create will only be visible in my own private space—so long as his status is marked as living.

3) Add information about other living relatives.

John’s parents, Liam and Emma, are still alive, so I click on Add Mother and Add Father to create new records and add these relatives toHeather’s tree in my private space.I can also do the same for John’s other living relatives.

Screenshot of Add Father and Add Mother buttons on FamilySearch.

4) Connect to deceased ancestors.

Once I have entered in the information for the living people on this branch of the tree, I am ready to connect to deceased relatives. In our example, Emma’s mother is deceased and already in FamilySearch. I click Add Mother and type in Margaret Brown, born in 1924 in Kentucky.

Note: If I already know the ID number of the person I am searching for, I can choose to enter that instead.

Screenshot showing how to Add Mother on FamilySearch.

Screenshot showing how to add a relative by ID number on FamilySearch.

Once I click Next,FamilySearch shows me possible matches that it finds in the Family Tree.

Possible matches found in the FamilySearch Family Tree.

One of these possibilities is a match, so I could click Add Match. Before I do, I also notice that one option allows me to add Margaret Brown and her husband, Soloman, at the same time, so I choose Add Couple Match to add both relatives to my tree view. Once I do that, FamilySearch will connect them toHeather’s tree information—along with all their ancestors.