Spouse Record, Head of Household, Divorce, Relationship record

Becky Wise 2

Hi. Our foundation has been using RE/FE for about a 1 1/2 years. We recently had a situation where two constituents were linked as a spouses. We were notified of their divorce, and initially thought an "end date" on the relationship was the way to handle the change in the relationship. As we bounced off ideas for future processes, we realized that Head of Household processing would be affected if we didn't remove the spouse record. Another consideration would be if either constituent were to remarry, we wouldn't want there to be two spouse records. How are other RE customers handling divorces. Would anyone suggest adding a relationship type of "ex-spouse" to keep the history of both constituents?

JoAnn Strommen

We change the relationship/reciprocal to "Former Spouse" and uncheck the spouse box name when they each have their own records.  This reformats our joint add/sal to only use the one name.  It should also gray out/ removed HOH as a factor. 


If it's a relationship record, does not have their own record in RE, the HOH is not affected. 


This has worked for us. 

shani traum

We have a relationship type of former spouse that we would use on the records.  This way we have the historical biographical information still on both records.


We change marital status to divorced.


We uncheck the "spouse" box so as to break that connection. 


We remove combined name and salutation from both records.


We remove/edit any other name option such as donor listing.


If one of them remarries, the new spouse is treated as any spouse would be - marital status set to married, relationship set to spouse/spouse, check box checked, combined name/salutation added, etc.


 

Jen Claudy

One of our programs is specifically for couples who are divorcing, so we have a lot of this in our database.  Same as what JoAnn and Shani said...change the type, uncheck "spouse" (you have to do this from the Relationships Tab, not from the Spouse button on Bio1), adjust addr/sal, marital status, donor listing, etc.  I also put in an end date, if known.  Our Relationship Type is actually "Spouse-Former" and we have "Spouse?" for when we're not completely sure what the status is...this keeps all the Spouse entries together in the dropdown, which aids in anyone new finding the available options. 

Becky Wise 2

Thank you all for great ideas and suggestions! 

Christine Cooke 2

If they are not separate but linked consitit records, make the spouse a constituent. 

Uncheck the Spouse check box. 

Change the relationship and recip relationship to ex-husband/wife/spouse.

And lastly, uncheck the soft credit the spouse checkbox. 

Be sure to fix any oddities like address and phone number change, and addressee/salutations.

Cammi Derr

shani traum:

We have a relationship type of former spouse that we would use on the records.  This way we have the historical biographical information still on both records.


We change marital status to divorced.


We uncheck the "spouse" box so as to break that connection. 


We remove combined name and salutation from both records.


We remove/edit any other name option such as donor listing.


If one of them remarries, the new spouse is treated as any spouse would be - marital status set to married, relationship set to spouse/spouse, check box checked, combined name/salutation added, etc.


 

We also disable address sharing and try to get updated addresses as well.  We also ensure that the automatic soft-credit is disabled.