sisters marrying brothers

[Bea Rae-Smith]

In my tree two sisters marry two brothers but in the (vertical) relative chart only one of the couples is linked by a marriage line. This couple have a box each with no mention of the spouse or the marriage, just linked by the marriage line. The couple without the marriage line have the spouse and marriage in each of their boxes. Any suggestions as to why this happens? Apart from the fact that the marriage lines would have to cross each other? And would the only solution be to manually add the information in the boxes, and the line.
With very many thanks for any help.

[Mark]

Hi Bea,

Any suggestions as to why this happens?

I'm guessing the source (starting person) of the chart is a descendant of the couple that have a marriage line connecting their boxes, is that correct?

In the Relative chart, couples that are direct ancestors of the source of the chart will always be given separate boxes with a connecting marriage line. This is done because each of the spouses is going to have a line connecting them to each of their sets of parents (as both sets of parents are also direct ancestors of the source), and if the information for both spouses was in one box it would cause trouble determining which spouse was connected to which set of parents. Imagine having one box with two sets of lines coming out of it to the parents -- it wouldn't be clear which set of parents belonged to which spouse. It can also help with organizing boxes in the chart, e.g. spacing the spouse far apart enough to have their relatives boxes positioned well.

For relatives who aren't direct ancestors, the spouses will be put in the same box because only one set of parents will be included in the chart (as the other set aren't blood relatives of the source of the chart), so there's no reason to separate them into their own boxes (and it would unnecessarily complicate the chart).

HTH

[Bea Rae-Smith]

Hi Mark
Thank you so much! You guessed correctly - and I now understand the layout. Perfect!
Bea