And you are absolutely correct in that regard (or is that plural here?).  But the original question, again, dealt with the legal institution of marriage, the legal prohibition (or not) against marrying an in-law.  I was only recentering on the original question.  But note, it was the legal documents you mention below that provided the hypothetical family with the clues to find others.

My use of "side" is not to be taken as a pejorative; it is a commonly used term that I learned from clients when I first started doing/including AA genealogy.

About life-and-death issues "needing" blood relatives, any blood, bone marrow, etc bank will tell you that good finds are more likely located in the broad community, not necessarily the "blood" family.  I am so very glad I will not be here in a few centuries to "help" descendants of sperm banks trace their "blood" lines!

To address a developing tone here, we ALL need to carefully look at the primary sources, the original documents before adding anyone to our research.  We will hit our undocumented lines soon enough, and I don't mean the ones we don't want to include - but our ancestors who did not enjoy the luxury of documented lives.  We don't all descend from Charlemagne.  And that is all I am trying to say here.

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