Question PEDI

Hello,

Years ago I found out that my father was actually not the biological child of his parents through DNA testing. His official birth certificate lists them as his parents, he was not adopted in legal sense, the forms were filled out with their information days after he was born so there is no adoption record. I assume this was to cover up a relationship that "wasn't approved". To further complicate this DNA proves that he is related to both the mother and father that raised him but unfortunately I'm unable to confirm exactly who as those who would know are no longer alive, so I have to rely on hoping in future closer DNA matches show up. I can just tell by the DNA that it must have been to a brother/sister to each parent.

I'm now just after 6 years finding time to correct the relationships in gedcom so I created a new set of "unknown" parents to him and set them as biological. With the existing parents that raised him I noticed in the newer gedcom standard there is a "RELATED" option, which would fit best with the situation above, unfortunately not available with current webtrees. Using ADOPT in the above obviously creates false information in this situation, or slightly inaccurate at least.

What would best way to show the relationship within the current setup?

Thanks

In this case I would still use the adopted tag with a note that the adoption was not legalized (or non traditional / not formal) along with your DNA explanation of your reasoning for this conclusion.  The colloquial use of the term “adoption” is only one use of the term and it does not necessarily mean “formal”.  

I suggest to use foster parents instead of adoptive parents. You need to distinguish between an adoption (or fostering) event which is created on the facts and events tab of the individual (son or daughter) in question and the linkage to a family which is created on the families tab of the individual. Event and linkage are independant from each other.

At the bottom of the families tab click on Link this individual to an existing family as a child, select the foster family and for the relationship select Foster.

This will create 2 level 1 entries for the individual which can be seen in the raw GEDCOM:

• a custom FOSTER event with no details at all which is shown on the facts and events tab of the individual. You can delete this if you don't have any details about the fostering event.
  1 EVEN
  2 TYPE FOSTER
• a family linkage which is shown on the families tab as Family with foster parents. This is what you want to keep.
  1 FAMC @F2@
  2 PEDI FOSTER

I think you have three choices here.

1. Follow Ken's suggestion and change your father's relationship to his parents' family to PEDI adopt, and also add an adoption tag stating that he was adopted by the father at the time of birth with an explanation of what you know about the situation
2. Follow Sir Peter's suggestion which is basically the same except for substituting "foster" instead of "adoption"
3. Continue to do nothing except add a note to your father's birth record explaining that DNA testing shows that your father's father is not his biological parent but his actual father is unknown at this time.

Personally, I would probably follow choice 3 until I was able to identify the biological father, since having a box marked "unknown" seems pretty useless. However, if you wish to take a different choice, I'd follow Ken's suggestion based on the legal definitions of "foster" versus "adoption". In particular, a foster child is temporarily assigned to a foster family who raises the child and acts as their guardian. The foster child is not an official family member, and isn't treated as "next of kin" with respect to inheritance, etc. If the relationship becomes permanent, then the child is adopted by the foster family. Clearly your father was treated as a member of his parents' family, so his relationship is much more than a "foster" child.

Just like adoption, placing a child into foster care is a legal process, and the guardians need to be licensed by the foster care system. Social workers and courts are involved. Apparently nothing like that took place when your father was born. It seems closest to the long-ago practice in some cultures (before DNA testing etc) where a man would simply declare that the child of an unwed mother was "his" (i.e., "his" to raise but not necessarily his biologically).

I think you have three choices here.

1. Follow Ken's suggestion and change your father's relationship to his parents' family to PEDI adopt, and also add an adoption tag stating that he was adopted by the father at the time of birth with an explanation of what you know about the situation
2. Follow Sir Peter's suggestion which is basically the same except for substituting "foster" instead of "adoption"
3. Continue to do nothing except add a note to your father's birth record explaining that DNA testing shows that your father's father is not his biological parent but his actual father is unknown at this time.

Personally, I would probably follow choice 3 until I was able to identify the biological father, since having a box marked "unknown" seems pretty useless. However, if you wish to take a different choice, I'd follow Ken's suggestion based on the legal definitions of "foster" versus "adoption". In particular, a foster child is temporarily assigned to a foster family who raises the child and acts as their guardian. The foster child is not an official family member, and isn't treated as "next of kin" with respect to inheritance, etc. If the relationship becomes permanent, then the child is adopted by the foster family. Clearly your father was treated as a member of his parents' family, so his relationship is much more than a "foster" child.

Just like adoption, placing a child into foster care is a legal process, and the guardians need to be licensed by the foster care system. Social workers and courts are involved. Apparently nothing like that took place when your father was born. It seems closest to the long-ago practice in some cultures (before DNA testing etc) where a man would simply declare that the child of an unwed mother was "his" (i.e., "his" to raise but not necessarily his biologically).

Valid points. Not that this would make much of a difference, but I suggested to NOT create an ADOP or a custom event because there is no evidence for such an event. Whether there were legal requirements for foster care and whether it had to be limited timewise depends on the law at that time and the location (country) in question.

Maybe go back one step and question the assumption(?) that the biological parents were both siblings of the adoptive/foster parents. Is there any evidence that these siblings existed?

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, taking them all in before I decide what to do.

To further clarify how the relationships of the known and unknown are.

My father was born in Manitoba, Canada

DNA shows that he is genetically linked to both his mothers G side and fathers C side. As so what would be my 1st cousins are actually 2nd cousins based on the genetic match. His brothers and sisters that he was raised with would of actually been his 1st cousins. Only his oldest "sister" knew "he just appeared one day and I had a baby brother". She was only like 5 at the time but says she didn't remember her mom being pregnant and had no other information besides that. As said before his father that raised him wasn't even in Canada at the time, military records prove that he was in England for 1+ years before and after my father was born.

I know on mother G side the 2 brothers one was serving in WW2 so can't possibly be him as the father and the other we are able to rule out as well due to DNA not being close enough to the other relatives. This leaves a sister and there was a rumor she had a relationship that wasn't approved in the family but no one knows any more then that. She had no children and as far as anyone knows never had any relationships other then the rumored one that wasn't approved. Later in life she lived with the parents who raised my father as she was blind and they helped take care of her. Oddly enough this "aunt" when my brother was born she sent a huge gift box to my brother for his 2nd birthday and as far as anyone is aware she never did anything like that for anyone else. This aunt is most likely the biological mother to my father. Unfortunately there is no verbal or paper work that can confirm this and DNA can't pin point it as not enough have taken test in family to narrow down and most likely wouldn't as she didn't have any known children to test against that would be the closest match.

My father is also related on his fathers C side of the family as genetic matches going back as well. As mentioned above he was over seas, and the DNA match to his actual children proves he isn't father but related just 1 step away. Using info on the mothers G side. I can only assume it was brother on the fathers C side, and again lack of DNA testing leaves it unknown. There was 3 full brothers and a half brother to this man who potentially could be the father based on the DNA if the assumption is correct that the mother was on the mothers G side of things

Reading that back it sounds fairly complicated, hopefully I typed that out in a way that is fully understandable

His official birth certificate lists them as his parents, he was not adopted in legal sense, the forms were filled out with their information days after he was born so there is no adoption record.

That's not necessarily true. My wife's aunt and her husband were unable to have children of their own, and so adopted three infants in Minnesota during the 1960s. They were "closed" adoptions, where the names of the birth parents were kept confidential, and their official birth certificates list only the names of the adoptive parents. Thus, there could indeed be an adoption record for your father if you are willing to dig.

DNA shows that he is genetically linked to both his mothers G side and fathers C side. As so what would be my 1st cousins are actually 2nd cousins based on the genetic match. His brothers and sisters that he was raised with would of actually been his 1st cousins. Only his oldest "sister" knew "he just appeared one day and I had a baby brother". She was only like 5 at the time but says she didn't remember her mom being pregnant and had no other information besides that.

This situation is indeed complex...  Your father could have had either (a) one biological parent DNA linked to the G family and the other biological parent DNA linked to the C family, or (b) one biological parent DNA linked to both the G and C families. If you are sure there are no previous connections between the G and C families, then alternative (b) would require one of his "siblings" to be his parent -- which isn't possible because his oldest "sister" is only 5 years older than him. Thus, let's focus on alternative (a).

Have you compared your father's "male haplotype" (= Y chromosome, passed from the father to all MALE children) and "female haplotype (= mitochondrial DNA, passed from the mother to ALL children) to those of his close relatives? You should be able to tell whether his male parent was from the G or C family, and similarly for his female parent.

And, finally, keep in mind that "first cousins" normally share (only) one pair of grandparents, and "second cousins" normally share (only) one pair of great-grandparents. However, the amount of DNA sharing will be cut in half if those connection points are a single person who had children with different partners. Conversely, in your case the amount of DNA sharing will be doubled because there are connection points in BOTH the G and C trees, in which case your "first cousins" might actually be "double third cousins".

For my fathers case he has 0 record of adoption at all.

When I contacted Manitoba Vitals they actually responded and told me they do not hold a record of adoption related to him and further more his birth record has not been amended which is what a "closed" adoption would involve. So from the provinces view on paper his registered parents were his birth parents, which means when my "grandmother" submitted the documents, she falsified them to cover other things up.

I'll hopefully get some time tonight to read your information/comments on DNA above and process it. Unfortunately it is my DNA and my brothers DNA that is used for the comparison, as my dad was deceased prior to DNA testing becoming more common.