I would like to pose a question to the Genealogical Community. Multiple Ancestry Trees

Have you ever thought your tree is way too large to maintain!! I thought my core tree was too large to handle. Each month when I went to verify and validate my data. I would find many duplicates and problems. These duplicates and problems usually appeared in distant non-direct relatives. An example of a distant non related individual would be the parents of my nephew’s wife’s sister’s husband. I decided I should start new trees especially for non-direct relative. My core tree is the

HAYLEY TREE

For spouses I have added their immediate parents but excluded siblings and grandparents. Some of my spouses were getting so many "leaves" and interesting photos and stories I decided to make separate Ancestry.com trees for these outgrowths. I racked my brain of what could be the possible problem with this decision to separate my trees. I decided to limit my core tree to directs, spouses and spouse parents.

Using the name of the spouse of a cousin I then began trees with the spouses’ name.

The Mary Smith Himan Tree. Etc. I was going to share with the spouses the little I did find on their families but my Himan tree truly only has about 600 known Himan's. I even separated my husband's parents. Elizabeth Rodrigues and her parents show up on my Himan tree. But then Elizabeth Rodrigues Himan has her own tree.

I also have a tree named research tree.

My research tree is random data that I find that I want to follow up on before I actually add to any of my trees.

Today I found the problem with multiple ancestry trees.

I received an ancestry.com inbox email of a person that says he is interested in following up with an ancestor found on my tree. He included in his email the name, dates and locations of the individual that he was interested in collaborating with data. I have gone into my forest, climbed up every tree and searched for this name to 'no results found'.

Okay my solution will be to email back to this researcher

and explain I have several trees and if he could please include the name of the tree he found this person. I will also explain I will be very pleased to forward any data I have regarding this person. I assume this is a relative of one of my cousin's spouses. I would like to pose a question to the Genealogical Community. Should I have a core trees with absolutely everyone on it? I like the fact that I have my core 6k+ Hayley tree just about memorized. Would a better idea be to maintain an overall tree and the individual trees?

To try to duplicate data exactly into two different data bases is always very risky.

One thing I have learnt in documentation control is never ever try to duplicate data in two different locations. I validate and verify my trees regularly. By separating my trees I have been able to spot errors, duplicates, possible problems very quickly. A very clean database is very important to me. The reason a clean database is important to me is because I GED com and adjust data to apply in several stand-alone software programs. I would like input on how other genealogist solve this issue.