What to call a deceased spouse when surviving spouse remarries

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ShawnAlis Cusato
ShawnAlis Cusato
Ancient Membership 10 Comments Photogenic Blackbaud Certified
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Do you use a separate relationship type for deceased spouses?  What about if the surviving spouse remarries, do you have a different term then?  We only use Spouse and Ex-Spouse for divorces.  It is confusing to see in the relationship window two spouses, even though the Deceased column should clarify the situation.  We're not too interested in using terms like Deceased or Late Spouse, but perhaps we're too finicky?  How do y'all handle it?
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  • Karen Stuhlfeier
    Karen Stuhlfeier Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Photogenic

     We unlink them as spouses and relate them with the relationship of "Deceased Spouse".

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Ancient Membership 2,500 Likes 2500 Comments Photogenic
    For both deceased or divorced we use relationship of "former spouse."  Works fine for our needs which are pretty minimal for this type of info.
  • Lorna Ruemper
    Lorna Ruemper
    Tenth Anniversary First Comment Loyalty Badge Activity: First Reply

    From the POV of the surviving spouse's record we put the "Relationship" blank and the "Reciprocal Relationship" as "Widow".  The deceased spouse is unticked as the "Spouse" on the bio1 tab.  This leaves the surviving spouse free to marry again as the "Marital Status" can always be changed from "Widow" :)

     

  • Jennifer Warner 2
    Jennifer Warner 2
    Ninth Anniversary 25 Likes 10 Comments Name Dropper

    ShawnAlis Cusato:

    Do you use a separate relationship type for deceased spouses?  What about if the surviving spouse remarries, do you have a different term then?  We only use Spouse and Ex-Spouse for divorces.  It is confusing to see in the relationship window two spouses, even though the Deceased column should clarify the situation.  We're not too interested in using terms like Deceased or Late Spouse, but perhaps we're too finicky?  How do y'all handle it?

    We use the relationship 'Widow' for the living spouse (change marital status to Widowed as well) and we do not change the relationship type for the decedent (they are still either the husband or wife).  We ONLY break the spousal link if the widowed spouse remarries using former spouse and widow as the relationships.  We also soft credit the living spouse rather than moving the decedent's gifts fully over.  We make our decisions NOT to delete based on our procedure of soft credit.

  • shani traum
    shani traum
    Ninth Anniversary 250 Likes 100 Comments Name Dropper
    We use Deceased Spouse/Surviving Spouse.  If the surviving spouse remarries, there's no need to change anything.

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