Lyndsey,

Allen Browne has an article that discusses your issues. I don't know if it
will answer your question or not. Here is the link:

http://allenbrowne.com/AppHuman.html

I've toyed with this idea also for one of my membership databases, but have
not done anything yet.

My thoughts, for what they are worth:

tblFamily Table - like Allen's tblGroup table.
keyed by FamilyNo - Automatic number field
Flds: Family Name
Address
City
St
Name
Head of Household Member Id (foreign key to the tblMember
table).

tblMember Table - Like Allen's tblClient table.
Key: MemberNo - Automatic number field
Flds: Family No
Title (Mr, Ms, Mr & Mrs, etc.)
First Name
Middle Name
Last Name (of just one field for name)
Relation (Head of household, father, mother, son, daughter, etc)
Birthday
Date of Death (if this field is not 0, then person is deceased)
(no use to have a yes/no field AND a date of
death field.
Notes


As for the entry screen:

I've asked the same question on this forum as you did about the data entry
screen and I've not received a good answer.

You could do two separate data entry forms / screen, but that is a data
entry paid.

I think a better option would be to create a Family Form that has a member
sub-form on it.

The top havel of the Family form would allow the user to enter the "Family"
house information. This form would have the tblFamily as it RowSource.

The bottom half of the form would be the Member sub-file form where you
would enter the individual family members. This sub-form would retrieve the
family number from the master form. When the head of house hold member is
entered, this sub-form would set a "head of house hold member id" variable in
the family form

This design is not as flexible as Allen's design because it does not allow
one person to be a member of multiple family as Allen's design does.
However, Allen's design is a bit more work to implement.

As for the deceased information, I would include that information on the
member record just for simplicity.

Which sample template did you modify - Microsoft's?

I would love for other people to add their opinions as I would love to have
an answer to these questions.


If you have more detailed questions, please post them and I will try to
answer them. I have a vested interest in this only because I have the same
question.

If you have problems setting up the form and sub-form (which I did when I
first learned about sub-forms), please post to this question. I've had a LOT
of help for this forum whilel I was working with my software for a local
charity, so I'm happy to help you.


Good luck.

Dennis