How to Create a Family Tree

This article walks through building a family tree from nothing: a group to hold the family, the people in it, the relationships between them, and the diagram itself.

If this is your first family tree, the app offers a guided Create Your First Family Tree flow that walks the same path.

Step 1: Create a Group for the Family

Each client family lives in its own group. Groups keep families separate from one another and control who on your team can see them.

See How to Create a Group for the steps and how groups fit together.

Give the group the family's name — "The Smith Family", for example. It is what you and your colleagues will search for later.

Step 2: Add the People

Add each family member as an individual in the group. You do not need everyone at once — start with the people the diagram must show and add more as the picture fills in.

See How to Add People to a Family for which details matter and why.

Step 3: Record the Relationships

Connect the people: who is a parent of whom, and who is partnered with whom. Those two link types produce the generational layout by themselves.

Add adopted, foster, or guardian links where they apply. See Family Relationship Types.

Step 4: Create the Diagram

Create a new diagram in the group and choose Family Tree as the type. Give it a name — the dialog suggests the pattern with an example like Smith Family Tree — and optionally a description to remind colleagues what it covers.

Choose which family members to include, and the diagram lays itself out automatically: generations stacked top to bottom, partners side by side.

Step 5: Review and Adjust

Once the tree is drawn:

• Check the generations read correctly. If someone is on the wrong level, the usual cause is a missing or reversed parent link.
• Look for people you meant to include. Anyone without a relationship to the rest of the family will stand alone.
• Adjust the styling if the diagram is going in front of a client. See How to Style a Family Tree.

Step 6: Export

Export the finished tree as a PDF or PNG for the advice file, the client meeting, or the estate planning pack.

Keeping It Current

The diagram is generated from your data, so it does not go stale on its own. When something changes in the family — a birth, a marriage, a separation, a death — update the people and relationships, and every diagram showing them reflects the change. There is no chart to redraw.