Family Tree protects privacy by limiting who can see information about living relatives through the use of private trees and family group trees.
- Private Tree. You can enter your living family into your private tree, which only you can see. The system hides records that you create of living people from everyone else, including the people themselves and other family members. When you are using Family Tree, this tree is called your "FamilySearch Tree."
- Family Group Tree. You can enter your living family into a family group tree and share access to the information with them. When you are using Family Tree, this tree is called by the name of its family group.
You can create both a private tree and one or more family group trees as needed.
Identifying records of living people in Family Tree
Whether the person is in a private or family group tree, living people have a Living Person banner at the top of their Person page, underneath each person's name. In places where a death date would appear for a deceased person, the word "Living" appears instead.
If a person is not manually marked living, the system uses rules to determine whether a person could still be living.
Church membership records
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sometimes see living relatives in their private trees. The information came from Church membership records.
Change histories
Sometimes, a living or confidential person that you can see is linked to a deceased person that all FamilySearch users see. If another user merges or deletes the deceased person, FamilySearch updates the change history of the living or confidential person to show that a change was made to the relationship between the living or confidential person and the deceased person. This update may show the contact ID of the user who performed the merge or delete. This user did not see the living or confidential person.
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