Pedigree Forge easily handles multiple spouses or partners. In the following example, we already have one spouse, and are going to add a second. Clicking on the ⋮ button next to the “Status” box, gives various options to add a new spouse.
We can then add the information on the new spouse:
The dynamic chart will now show both spouses. As is the convention, they husband is flanked by the two wives:
If we navigate to make Thomas Hardy the active person again, we can see that he now has two spouses showing:
At present, Florence is the active spouse. We can use the drop-down list to make Emma the active spouse again.
Spouses or partners should be in chronological order. In the above example, Florence Dugdale is 2 of 2 and Emma is 1 of 2. The current spouses can be “moved up”, or “moved down” in order using the ⋮ button , next to the “Status” drop down.
Both marriages are shown in Thomas’ fact and event list. The one for the active spouse is shown with asterisks around e.g. *Married*, whereas the other is shown without:
Related to multiple spouses is the occasion where a person has had children out of wedlock. Here you might want to add a child without creating the other parent. In historic genealogy terms, it is just a fact that this more usually occurs that the mother is known, but the father isn’t.
To easily handle this option, select “Children” from then “Edit” menu whilst you are editing the known parent, then select “Add illegitimate child without father”. The option will be worded slightly differently if the selected person isn’t female. This will create a new “family” in which the mother is one of the parents, but won’t create a record for the other parent. A new child record will be added to this “family”. The status of the “family” will also be set to “Never Married” and the child’s linkage in the family will be set as illegitimate.
A similar situation can occur where you just don’t want to create a record for the other parent, but the child isn’t illegitimate. In this case, there is a similar option on the “Children” item of the “Edit” menu, that creates a new “family” where the active person is a parent, but doesn’t create the other parent, and then adds the child to this “family”. The status however isn’t set to “Never Married”, nor is the child flagged as illegitimate.
If you need to add more children to either, use the “Add child to this family” option, with the known parent as the active person.