How that I hooked you with the catchy title...
How do you handle two constituents that marry.
-Do you merge the records?
-Do you keep them seperate and make associations to each spouses record?
We merge.
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Julie P. Hamre
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-----Original Message----- From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Parnell E. LaLonde IV Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 2:08 PM To: Julie Hamre Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Conjoin or NOT to Conjoin, THAT is the question How that I hooked you with the catchy title... How do you handle two constituents that marry. -Do you merge the records? -Do you keep them seperate and make associations to each spouses record? This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!
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We merge, unless the patrons for some reason specifically say not to.
The question I would ask is what happens in the future if the couple splits? Yes, we are going through this right now. We merged the accounts when the couple married. Now they are divorced.
In hindsight, I would have created a third account for the couple. Associated the individual accounts to the 3rd account and inactivated the individual accounts. If I had done that, I could now just reactivate the old individual accounts.
It’s just something to think about before you merge.
Dee Dee
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From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Parnell E. LaLonde IV Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 2:08 PM To: Dee Dee Fite Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Conjoin or NOT to Conjoin, THAT is the question
We recently dealt with this issue, but our relationship was primarily with the wife, so we removed the husband from their account and created a new account for him. Then we associated the two records as ex-spouses.
If we had had to split the history, it would have been a lot messier for us, but we probably would have handled it with a some carefully tested updates on the back-end.
We merge the records as well, unless otherwise specifically specified by the constituent(s).
When we encounter a divorce, we have very strict guidelines as to how the records are handled. It depends on a variety of criteria, especially because we are a consortium. I don't think we run into that many problems though, considering the possibilities.
Generally, the history remains with one of the spouses only - we do not usually split the information. It is one of our strict protocols that a subscription must go to one person and cannot be split between the two. We require the patron to let us know their preferences in writing. Typically, one spouse has the greater involvement with the Center and per their divorce settlement, one spouse gains all history and the other loses all history just like any other asset. We would of course create a record for the other spouse if their involvement continued with the Center with some detailed CSI or Research notes.
Sometimes we let divorced spouses keep some of the benefits, but mostly on the Development end, not the ticketing side. An example would be Board members and their spouses who have both been highly involved with the Center - we will usually let the one not receiving the history continue to have access to some of the perks the couple obtained together.
Typically we merge the records. However, when we are dealing with "Power Couples", meaning each one is a high level executive at a company that has ties to our institution , we prefer not to merge the accounts. We create associations to their accounts. This way, when we do extractions, we make sure that each person receives an invitation to their business adress with their business salutations.