Two Year Limit on Inactive Temple Ordinance Reservations

In September, 2015, the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will begin unreserving temple ordinances that have been inactive for more than two years. Here is part of the announcement that was sent by email to those who have such reservations.

Within the next month, the Family History Department will begin unreserving temple ordinance reservations that have been inactive for more than two years. You are receiving this email because you have reservations that are subject to being released.

What you should do

If there are ordinance reservations you want to ensure are taken care of before they are released, share them with a family member, friend, or the temple. For some special reservations, you may want to unreserve them and then re-reserve them to keep them on your list. If you prefer to have the ordinances released, you don¹t need to do anything. Click the link below to view your current temple ordinance reservations list, including those that are impacted by this policy.

The reservations I have that are more than two years old are those individuals I have reserved that have unresolved duplicates. However, it appears that the procedures and requirements now in place in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree may prevent these duplicate ordinance from being done until the program allows the unresolved mergers to occur. If I unreserve them and then re-reserve them, my experience is that the program, in many cases, now prevents the ordinances from being done until the issues with the duplicates are resolved. In some cases, we have been unable to re-reserve that narrow category of duplicates.

From talking to many people, most of those with older reserved ordinances are accepting the new policy. Those who have been trying to do the ordinances for their ancestors that have been reserved by unresponsive users of the program, are very happy that they now have a chance to move forward.