DocumentationOpen the editor

Add a sibling or half-sibling

You can add a brother or sister who shares both parents with a person, or a half-sibling who shares one parent through that parent’s other partnership.

2 min readChecked 16 October 2026Open in the editor

Siblings are drawn on the same row and hang from the same couple line, because they are children of the same parents. McGoldrick, Gerson and Petry (2020) arrange siblings in order of birth, from the oldest on the left to the youngest on the right, and birth order is often relevant to an assessment. A half-sibling hangs from a different couple line, which represents the shared parent’s other partnership.

Demonstration in the editor
This demonstration runs in the editor on a copy of a sample family. It does not change your own chart.

Procedure

  1. 1

    Hover over the person to show the ring.

  2. 2

    Click Sibling on the left of the ring. The sibling appears beside the person with the same parents, and the side panel opens with the placeholder name selected.

  3. 3

    Type the sibling’s name.

  4. 4

    Select the sibling’s sex under Basics.

  5. 5

    Type the year of birth in Born. The year allows the editor to sort the siblings by age.

Tip

A new sibling is placed beside the person, whatever the sibling’s age. To arrange the siblings from oldest to youngest, click Arrange, select Tidy, click More options, switch on Siblings in birth order, and click the button at the foot of the dialog.

Half-siblings

A half-sibling is added as a child of the shared parent’s other partnership, so the Sibling button is not used for it. First add the other partner to the shared parent with Partner on the ring. Then hover over the new partner, and click Child. The child hangs from the second couple line and is therefore drawn as a half-sibling of the children of the first.

Siblings whose parents are not drawn

If the person has no parents on the chart, the new sibling is joined to the person by a dashed line drawn above the two symbols. The key lists this line as “Siblings, parents unspecified”, because the editor does not invent parents that have not been recorded.

When parents are later added to one of the siblings, the other sibling can be attached to them. Press C, click the sibling who has no parents, and then click the sibling whose parents are drawn. Click Siblings in the card, which gives the first sibling the same parents as the second. The dashed line remains on the chart, so click it and then click Remove.