Representing separation from marriage

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#1

I’m trying to work out the correct event code for separation of marriage. I imported a GEDCOM file produced by Reunion 12 into RootsFinder. The separation of marriage is recorded as event code SEPA not that file.

This event is correctly interpreted as ‘Separation’ in Roots Finders.

However, when exporting a GEDCOM from RootsFinder the code _SEPR is used instead. This code is not known to Reunion 12 so imports as an unknown code.

I have not been able to find any documentation that prescribes the correct code, but given that SEPA is being imported correctly as Separation I’m wondering if the GEDCOM export is incorrect.

#2

Separation is a non-standard GEDCOM event. Since it’s non-standard, different genealogy programs use different tags to represent it. We import both SEPA and _SEPR as the Separation event. _SEPR is more-commonly used by other programs than SEPA for Separation events, so we export it as _SEPR.

We have another option, which may be better. Most genealogy programs are able to handle the more-popular non-standard tags, but since we can’t be certain which genealogy programs handle which non-standard tags, I could export all non-standard events as generic EVEN types, with “Types” equal to the english-language name of the event. In your case, the Separation event would have a type of “Separation”, which is probably better than _SEPR for you, right?

#3

Could be. If you could tell me the syntax I could try to mock that up and see how it works. My guess is it should handle it OK (using Reunion v 12 on Mac)