My next project has started and I'm struggling right from the beginning with a relationship. We will be collecting participant/patient information as part of a study we are doing. I'm trying setup it up so we can see immediate family and extended family.

I've got it close but a few things are tripping me up are; Fathers having children with more than one wife mother having children with different husbands.

And I have no control of the order in which I get participant information. So I could get info about a child before (week/months/sometimes never)I ever get their parents info. Unless I'm misunderstanding I can use a portals to create "parent" records from a "child" record.

Attached is a file with the relationships that are kind for working. Nothing is automated yet I'm just working on the relationships. Please if you have any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.

families.fp7.zip

As no-one has offered any suggestions to you yet...

I don't know whether the attached file will be of any use (I admit I haven't looked into your file to see how you've accomplished what you require).

The file was converted and partly amended from a version 6 file used for keyword hierarchies, was/is very rough and probably has many bad practices but it works with different "family" relationships, and where parent records can be created from children records, related (spouse) records created, etc.

A limitation is that it is not intuitive when relationships are created.

Tree.zip

Perhaps this model can help you.

Recursive Data Structures