Foster parents, foster children and foster siblings
Short answerA foster parent cares for a child in their home without becoming the legal parent; the child is their foster child. Children raised in the same foster home, or a foster child and the family’s own children, are foster siblings. Foster relationships are about care, not blood or legal parentage, unless an adoption follows.
Foster care and adoption
Fostering is usually temporary and the legal parent stays the same. Adoption makes a permanent legal parent. Family Trees keeps them apart: a foster link never counts as a bloodline for kinship, while an adoptive link does, so a child adopted by their foster family can be changed from foster to adoptive and every relationship updates.
Including foster family on a tree
Many people want the families who raised them on their tree. Add the foster parent and link them with the foster kind; the tree draws that link in its own style next to any birth or adoptive parents. Nothing is hidden and nobody is mislabeled. The complex families guide shows how.
Let Family Trees name it for you
Every parent link in Family Trees is birth, adoptive, step or foster, and every couple is married, partners, separated or divorced. From that, the app names each relative in plain words on their page and under How are they related?, including half, step, foster and in-law relations. It’s free for up to 100 people.
Questions
Should foster parents go on a family tree?
That is a personal choice. If they are part of your story, add them. Family Trees records them as foster parents, so the tree stays accurate about birth and adoptive parents too.
Are foster siblings related?
Not by blood or law through the foster link. They are family through the home they shared, and Family Trees calls them foster siblings.