Cycle relationships are also known as „pedigree collapse“ and occur when a person appears more than once in a family tree. For example, when a man marries his cousin, they have a pair of grandparents in common. As a result, their children will have only 3 pairs of great-grandparents instead of 4. Another frequent case is two brothers marrying two sisters from another part of the family tree.

With a new feature, you can now mark these profiles as appearing twice. On itsourtree.com, these double profiles appear as grey nodes. By clicking on the “+” in the upper right hand corner of the profile node, you can switch between the profiles.

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To add a cycle, click on the icon in the lower right hand corner of your family tree:

Then you select the two profiles. To do so, just click on the node you’d like to select. If you can’t see the profile in the section of the tree that you’re looking at, simply navigate to the spot you’re looking for. When both profiles have been selected, the system will suggest possible cases of a cycle.

There are three possible cases:
1.    The persons are identical (because two profiles had been added for one person)
2.    Siblings
3.    Partner
You just pick the correct option and click “Save” (Please note: the three options will not be available in any case. Exceptions result from the rules at the end of this text.)

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To delete/undo a cycle, click on the “x” in the upper right hand corner of the grey (!!!) profile (just as if you wanted to delete the profile). A window appears to ask you if you really want to delete the cycle. If you confirm, the cycle will be deleted.

Some basic rules about cycle relationships

1. To mark a person as identical means that person 1 inherits all connections of person 2. Person 2 will be deleted.
2. The amount of parents can never be more than 2. Explanation: When “marked as identical”, person 1 gets all parents of person 2. When “marked as siblings”, person 1 (and all his/her siblings) gets all parents from person 2 and vice versa person 2 (and all his/her siblings) gets all parents from person 1. Here, of course, a person cannot have more than 2 parents. That is why the options “mark as identical” and “mark as siblings” are not always available.
3. The deletion of a person I added cannot be reversed. Explanation: When you mark two persons as “identical”, one person will be deleted. Even if the cycle is deleted later on, person 2 will always be deleted.
4. Persons cannot be ancestors or siblings of their own ancestors.
5. Persons cannot be descendants or siblings of their own siblings.
6. A person can theoretically be anyone’s partner if he/she isn’t already the partner.
7. A person cannot be child AND sibling of a person of a parent (or any following generation). For further information see 4. and 5.