Okay, I just exited without saving because I screwed up an entire family tree. I've tried everything I can think of and I'm not getting something right so here's what I need to do and hopefully someone can help!

There is a family in one of my games that consists of 3 adult Sims and 6 children. So let's call the adults SimA, SimB and SimC.
SimA was married to SimB and SimC was their romantic interest who lived with them. SimA was the parent of all 6 children. SimB and C each had one kid with A. and the rest of the kids were from around town. Yeah...he's a regular Lothario...lol.

Well SimA died a while back and while I didn't exactly want this, I decided to go with the game flow, he was an evil a-hole anyway. He had almost no friends in town. (though oddly enough a good father and had a great relationship to all 6 kids!)

Anyway, while I was off playing another family SimB and C got married. Okay, that was cool. But of course the children who B and C didn't father are only listed as "best friends", so when I went back to play this family I tried to get them to adopt the other kids that were not their's by blood. I had no idea how to do this and tried a few things, but didn't get anything done. I kept getting the option to adopt another kid. (this is all using the Nraas mods btw)
When I tried to use "add child" I ended up somehow making SimB the grandfather to SimC and several of the children!! I had SimB selected and all I did was click "add child" and I assumed this would give me a list of kids to add to his family, but nothing appeared, it just did this weird thing. I tried to fix this and I just have no idea how to get it fixed! I don't get how that's supposed to work so I just exited to before I went back to this household. Is there an easy way, or even an EA way for the two married Sims to adopt the children in the house? Does anyone know how to use that freakin "Add Child" option?? I've never gotten anything but a mess when I've tried to use it, and it doesn't matter if I'm trying sibling, parent or whatever. I have no idea how it's supposed to work and I give up trying!

JohnL83 wrote: ↑

August 16th, 2019, 6:00 pm

Is there an easy way, or even an EA way for the two married Sims to adopt the children in the house?

Let's start here. The answer is no, because there is no way to adopt an existing sim in TS3. The entire adoption scenario involves being assigned a new baby, toddler, or child sim from what we are to imagine is an orphanage off-screen. The ability to adopt otherwise is just not present. There is a (weak) implementation of step parent and step child, but that's only relevant when a sim is a partner of another sim who has children. Even then, no adoptions take place.

A sim has two parents, at most, period. They cannot have birth parents and step parents.

I have to admit that I have no idea what went wrong with Add Child. If Sim B is the active sim and you click on Sim B and do MC > Advanced > Family > Add Child, then yes you are supposed to get a list of sims to select from. Perhaps you had Sim B active but clicked on one of the children instead, thereby making one of the children a child of the other? Actually this makes sense now that I've typed it out...perhaps you made Sim B the parent of Child 1, who then became the parent of Child 2 (erroneously, of course). How about if instead of all that you use the Family commands from City Hall/an in-game computer so that you are forced to choose the intended parent and intended child each time?

Note though that by doing so, these children might no longer have the deceased Sim A or whoever their other birth parent was as a parent since again, they can only have at most two parents.

igazor wrote: ↑

August 16th, 2019, 7:27 pm

Note though that by doing so, these children might no longer have the deceased Sim A or whoever their other birth parent was as a parent since again, they can only have at most two parents.

Hmmm, good to know. Yeah I'm not sure what happened with the 'add child' thing. I did successfully get a parent added once a while ago in another game. I'd pulled a single mom and her child from the bin and added them to a Sim I'd created and wanted them to be a family. It's the only time I got it to work correctly and didn't mess everything up. I had many fails at other attempts and I'm not sure what I keep doing wrong. I am fairly sure I had the right ones selected.

It's a shame you can't adopt step children. Once SimA died the game stopped calling the children step kids and they became friends. It's also strange that a deceased Sim is often called "ex". I'm not sure EA thought this process through very well. Which bugs me a bit since they gave us the ability to bring Sims back to life, yet once brought back, the spouse is not still their spouse. That's something I have been able to correct the few times I'd done such a thing.

I guess it's fine just having them say friend. Even though in reality B and C have become the kids parents. All of them are still children and two were toddlers when SimA passed. I felt like in RL adoption would often be the thing to happen if the other parents were not a part of the equation. One of the kids is an orphan since his mom was electrocuted fixing the dishwasher at their house! It was also the first time I'd seen a NA sim actually fix something. Other than when you have a sim call for repairs. Seriously, these kids have had a rough childhood. LOL I just wanted to give the little buggers a stable home. I suppose I can just leave it be, it's not as if the characters know any different anyway. Thanks for the input.