Short answer: in Altru, the settings that govern a marriage (how two spouses share an address, whether they live in one household, how they are named together, what happens when the marriage ends) are not a page you open from the main navigation. They show up in the context of a spouse relationship on a constituent record. To reach them, you start from one spouse’s record and work through the relationship, not from a menu.
That is why the screen feels hard to find. Staff often see it once, while adding a spouse, and then cannot locate it again when they need to fix something later.
Where the marriage settings actually live
Think of it this way: Altru doesn’t store a “marriage” as its own object. It stores two individual constituent records, a relationship between them marked as spouse, and (usually) a household that both belong to. The marriage options are attached to that relationship, so:
- When you add a spouse to a constituent, Altru presents choices about the pairing, such as whether to put them in a household together and how address and contact details are shared.
- When you edit the existing spouse relationship from either person’s record, you can revisit options tied to that relationship.
- When the relationship changes (a divorce, or one spouse passing away), the options for ending or adjusting the marriage are again reached through that relationship and the records involved, not a separate admin area.
The exact labels and which choices appear can vary by Altru release and by your security role. If you can’t see an option a colleague describes, compare your system role with theirs before assuming the feature is missing.
A dependable way to get there
- Search for and open one spouse’s constituent record.
- Go to the area of the record that lists their relationships.
- Find the spouse relationship in that list and open it for editing.
- Review the options presented there, and save.
If the person has no spouse relationship yet, you won’t find marriage options at all, because there is nothing for them to attach to. Add the spouse relationship first.
Is there a shortcut?
Not one we can point to with confidence. There’s no well-known direct link that opens marriage settings for an arbitrary couple, because the screen always needs to know which relationship you’re working on. A few things help in practice:
- Bookmark the records you touch often. A browser bookmark to a specific constituent page saves a search step for households you maintain regularly, such as board members or major donors.
- Start from the household when it’s faster. If you know the household name better than either individual’s name, open the household and go to a member’s record from there.
- Use a query to find couples needing cleanup. A constituent query filtered on spouse relationships (for example, spouses with different addresses, or spouses not in the same household) gives you a working list, so you’re clicking through records with a purpose instead of hunting.
- Ask Blackbaud support if you need a faster route for a recurring task. They can confirm whether your version has an alternative path, and that answer is more reliable than guessing.
Things to check before you change anything
Marriage settings ripple out to other parts of the database, so a little caution pays off:
- Household membership. Separating or combining spouses changes which household gets credit for revenue and how mailings are addressed. Decide which outcome you want before you save.
- Memberships. If the couple shares a dual or family membership, check who the primary member is and who is listed as a member before ending a marriage. You don’t want to strip a membership benefit from someone who still paid for it.
- Addressees and salutations. Joint names like “Mr. and Mrs.” or “Pat and Sam Rivera” may need updating after a change, especially for acknowledgment letters and renewal notices.
- Deceased handling. When a spouse dies, mark the deceased record properly rather than just ending the relationship, so they drop out of communications. Handle these with care; a misaddressed letter here is the kind of mistake people remember.
If you’re unsure how a particular option will affect households or memberships, try it on a test pair of records in a sandbox, or on two dummy constituents you create and then delete, before doing it on a real couple.
Quick answers
Why can’t I find marriage options under Administration?
Because they belong to a specific spouse relationship, not to a system-wide setting. Open a spouse’s constituent record and edit the relationship.
Can I change marriage options from either spouse’s record?
The spouse relationship is visible from both records, so you can generally start from either one. Confirm in your own database, since role permissions can limit what’s editable.
Will ending a marriage delete anyone’s history?
Ending a relationship shouldn’t erase giving or membership history on the individual records, but household-level views and credit can shift. Check the household and membership before and after so you know what moved.
