Tightening the 110 Year Rule

One of the most consistent complaints I field from day to day, concerns the blatant disregard for the 110 Year Rule for submitting ancestral names for Temple ordinances. There no other action accompanying the activities associated with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree that causes more hurt feelings and ill will than when unrelated people perform ordinances for people born within the last 110 years without permission. The Rule is clear:

110 Year Rule:

To do ordinances for a deceased person who was born in the last 110 years, the following requirements must be met.
The person must have been deceased for at least one year.
You must either be one of the closest living relatives, or you must obtain permission from one of the closest living relatives. If you are not a spouse, child, parent, or sibling of the deceased, please obtain permission from one of the closest living relatives before doing the ordinances. The closest living relatives are an undivorced spouse (the spouse to whom the individual was married when he or she died), an adult child, a parent, or a brother or sister.

Verbal approval is acceptable. Family members should work together to determine when the ordinances will be done and who will do them.

This last statement has NOW been modified. The current statement occurs above in yellow. I applaud the fact that the requirements have been substantially modified. This is a well deserved change and overdue. It is sad for me to hear all of the complaints. I hope this change helps to deter this tragic behavior in the future. It is further very sad that people would ignore the rule simply for the purpose of qualifying one more name.

I decided to give a few comments about how I select the topics for my posts. Over the course of a month, I will teach anywhere from about twenty or more classes at the Brigham Young University Family History Library or in other locations. Many of my blog topics come from the comments and questions raised in these classes. In this case, this particular complaint takes a number of different forms, but it is a consistent complaint and one that I received just yesterday in a class I taught at a Ward here in Provo, Utah. I all cases, I am careful to avoid discussing any specifics, especially the identities of the commentators. If I hear the same comment or question over and over, even though I do not conduct a "scientific" survey, I get a pretty good idea that the issue is a real problem.