How to Write Family Details in a Marriage Biodata, Including the Hard Parts

One line for each parent (name, and what they do or did), one short line for each sibling, and one or two lines on where the family is from. That covers most biodatas, and the format guide has a complete filled-in example.

This article is mostly about the times it doesn't fit. A father who has passed away, parents who separated, an elder sister who isn't married, a brother who needs care. The template has three neat rows, and the real family needs a sentence it doesn't have a box for. Each situation below has a version you can copy.

What goes in the family section

• Father and mother: full name, and occupation. If a parent is retired, say what they retired from. "Retired" on its own tells the reader nothing about the family.
• Siblings: elder or younger, what they're doing, and whether they're married if that's relevant. A clause each, not a paragraph.
• Family background: where the family is originally from and where it lives now.
• About family: optional. Two to four sentences on how the household works, covered further down.

Keep it to the people who live in or shape the household. For worked examples in context, the biodata example post has four complete ones, including one written by a parent.

The tone is factual. The family section isn't where you convince anyone of anything. Many families read it first, and they want to understand who they'd be dealing with, not be sold on it.

When your family doesn't fit the template

These are the cases the standard format skips. The guidance is the same in almost all of them: say it in one plain line, don't explain it, and let a conversation handle the rest.

A parent who has passed away

Put "Late" before the name. Keep the occupation line, because it still says something about the family, and it reads more naturally than a name standing alone.

Father: Late Prakash Deshmukh (retired as a section engineer, Central Railway)
Mother: Vandana Deshmukh, primary school teacher
Siblings: One younger sister, final year B.Pharm
Family Background: The family is from Satara and has lived in Pune since 1998.

Some families write "Late Shri" or add the year. Either is fine. You don't need the cause, and you don't need to say who raised you, though if a grandparent or an uncle stepped in and is part of the household now, one line in the about-family paragraph is a natural place to mention it.

If the contact number on an older version of the biodata was your father's, change it. It's easy to miss when you're updating everything else.

Divorced or separated parents

List the parent you live with as you normally would. For the other, you have a choice: list them with a short note, or leave the row and explain in one line. The option that tends to backfire is leaving it out entirely and having it come up in the third conversation.

Father: Anil Kapoor, runs a travel agency in Delhi
Mother: Ritu Kapoor, senior manager with an insurance company in Chandigarh
Siblings: None
Family Background: My parents separated in 2012. I grew up with my mother in
Chandigarh and I'm in regular touch with my father.

That last line does three jobs: it states the fact, it says where you grew up, and it answers the question a reader is most likely to have next. It doesn't explain why. Nobody needs that on a document that gets forwarded.

If one parent isn't in your life at all, it's reasonable to list only the one who is and write "Raised by my mother" in the background line.

A parent who has remarried, or step-siblings

Write the family you actually live with. Plenty of people list a stepmother or stepfather simply as "Mother" or "Father", and that's their call to make. Others prefer to be precise from the start. Both are honest.

Father: Rohan Mehta, chartered accountant, own practice
Mother: Late Kavita Mehta
Stepmother: Pooja Mehta, homemaker
Siblings: One younger half-brother, Class 11
Family Background: The family is from Bhavnagar and has been in Vadodara for
twenty years.

The same goes for siblings. "One younger brother" and "one younger half-brother" are both true. Pick the one that matches how your family talks about itself.

A parent who isn't working right now

A father between jobs, a family business that closed, a parent who stopped working because of their health. Say what they did and what they're doing now, in the plainest words available.

Father: Sanjay Patil, ran a textile trading business in Ichalkaranji until 2021,
now helps manage the family's agricultural land
Mother: Sunita Patil, homemaker

Father: Deepak Rao, took early retirement from a private bank in 2023 on health
grounds
Mother: Shobha Rao, accountant with a school trust

You don't owe anyone a diagnosis. "On health grounds" is complete. If a parent's health means they'll need care, and that care will fall partly on you and whoever you marry, it's worth one sentence in the about-family paragraph. That's a real part of the life the other person would be joining.

An elder sibling who isn't married yet

State it as it is. Some families will ask why the younger one is going first. The biodata doesn't need to answer that in advance.

Siblings: One elder sister, 34, software architect in Hyderabad, unmarried;
one younger brother, 26, doing his MS in Germany

Whether to include the age is up to you. It saves the arithmetic, and some people would rather leave it off because the sibling didn't ask to be on anyone's biodata. Checking with them before you publish their details is a courtesy worth extending.

A sibling who is divorced

A sibling's marital history is optional on your biodata. Some people leave it out and let the conversation get to it. Others include it because the sibling lives at home and will be part of daily life.

Siblings: One elder brother, 36, civil engineer with the state PWD, divorced,
lives with us in Nashik

If you include it, "divorced" is enough. The circumstances belong to your brother, not to your biodata.

A sibling with a disability

Describe your sibling by what they do first, the same way you'd describe anyone else. If they live with the family and will need support over the years, that's worth saying, because it genuinely affects the decision the other family is making, and being upfront is kinder to everyone than a late surprise.

Siblings: One younger brother, 24, has Down syndrome, attends a vocational
training centre in Vadodara and lives with us

Siblings: One elder sister, 31, works as a medical transcriptionist from home;
she has used a wheelchair since a road accident in 2015

Keep the medical detail to what a reader needs to understand the household. If your sibling can tell you how they'd like to be described, ask them.

An only child, or a big family

If you're an only child, write "None" or "Only child". A blank field reads as something you forgot.

If you have several siblings, one short clause each, eldest first. Five siblings don't need five sentences.

Siblings: Eldest brother, married, runs the family's hardware shop in Rajkot;
elder sister, married, lives in Surat; younger brother, final year B.Com

Family living abroad, or in different cities

Say where each person actually lives. If your parents split the year between India and a sibling's home abroad, say that too, because it changes who the other family will actually be meeting.

Father: Thomas Mathew, retired from ONGC
Mother: Annamma Mathew, retired nurse
Siblings: One elder brother, married, software engineer in Toronto, settled
there since 2018
Family Background: The family is from Kottayam. My parents live in Kochi and
spend three months a year with my brother in Canada.

Family type, family values and family status

Many printed formats have rows for these. They're worth thinking about before you fill them in, because the labels carry less information than they seem to.

Family type (nuclear or joint) is useful, and better still when you say who's actually in the house. "Joint family: my grandparents, my parents, and my uncle's family of four" tells a reader far more than "joint".

Family values (traditional, moderate, liberal) means whatever the reader already thinks it means. A family that calls itself moderate and a family that reads "moderate" can have entirely different pictures in mind. If there's something concrete you want a reader to know, say that instead: that it's a vegetarian household, that both your parents work, that your grandmother lives with you and the house runs around her routine. Facts like these let a reader decide for themselves.

Family status (middle class, upper middle class, affluent) has the same problem. Your parents' occupations already say most of it. Include the row if the families you're approaching expect it, and don't agonise over which word to pick.

Family income

This is a sensitive field, and there's no one right answer.

Reasons to include it: some families ask early, and a clear figure or range settles the question before it's raised. Reasons to leave it out: a biodata gets forwarded well beyond the first family, and a number on it travels with every copy.

If you include it:

• Give a range, not an exact figure.
• Say whose income it is. "Family income" and your own salary are different numbers, and they're easy to confuse.
• Don't count what isn't income. Property and savings aren't annual income, and adding them in gets corrected face to face.

If a family asks and you'd rather not put it in writing, "happy to discuss" is a complete answer.

Relatives, and the mosal line

In some Gujarati biodatas you'll see a line labelled Mosal. It names your mother's side of the family: usually her father's name and the town they're from. Some Marathi and other biodatas list a kaka (father's brother) or a mama (mother's brother) in the same way. These lines exist so a reader can place your family through people they might already know.

If the families you're approaching expect these lines, keep each to a name and a town:

Mosal: Late Ramanlal Shah, Mehsana
Kaka: Harish Shah, Ahmedabad
Mama: Nilesh Parikh, Vadodara

If they don't expect them, leave them out. Nobody on the other side misses a list of uncles, and every name you add is another person whose details are now circulating.

Writing the about-family paragraph

The rows say who's in the family. This paragraph says how the household actually works. Two to four sentences: who lives together, what a normal week at home looks like, and anything a person joining the family would genuinely want to know.

We're a small family. My parents both work, my father at a bank and my mother
at a school, and weekdays are fairly busy for everyone. Sundays are for the
three of us, usually lunch at my grandmother's place in the old city.

We live as a joint family: my grandparents, my parents, and my uncle's family
of four. My grandfather still goes to the shop every morning, and my mother and
aunt run the house between them. Festivals are big in our house and everyone is
home for them.

My father passed away in 2019, and since then it has been my mother, my sister
and me. My mother went back to teaching and my sister and I share most of the
running of the house. We're close, and my mother will stay with me after
marriage.

The last line of that last example matters. If a parent will live with you, say so here. It's the kind of thing both sides want to know early, and the boy's format guide goes into why.

What to avoid is the paragraph every biodata already has: "We are a well-educated, respected, God-fearing family with strong values." It describes every family equally, so it tells a reader nothing about yours. The about me guide makes the same point about adjectives, and it applies here just as much.

What to keep off

A biodata travels further than you expect. The family section is where the most identifying details tend to pile up, so it's worth a second read with that in mind.

• Your home address. A city is enough. A locality plus your parents' full names plus your father's employer is enough for a stranger to find the house.
• Exact workplaces for everyone. "Works with a public sector bank" says the same thing as the branch name and designation, and it's much harder to trace.
• Other people's phone numbers. One contact number for the biodata, and say whose it is.
• Details your siblings didn't agree to. Their divorce, their health, their salary. Ask before they go on a document you don't control once it's sent.

How to share a marriage biodata covers the choices you have once it's written: who gets it, as what, and whether it can be passed on.

Common mistakes

"Retired" with nothing after it. Retired from what? That line is the reader's picture of your family.

Explaining everything. A divorce, a death, a closed business: one line each. The explanation is a conversation, not a paragraph.

Leaving out the difficult fact. It comes up anyway, usually at a worse moment, and the omission becomes the story instead of the fact.

A list of accomplished relatives. An uncle who's a senior IAS officer isn't part of your household. Unless the families you're approaching expect relatives' lines, he doesn't belong here.

Adjectives about the family. "Respected", "cultured", "well-settled". Show it with a fact or leave it.

Writing it once. A parent retires, a sibling gets married, someone moves city. The family section goes out of date faster than people expect, and every PDF already sent keeps the old version.

Getting it written

The family section is usually the part a parent knows better than you, so it's a good one to hand over. On Marriage Profile, family details are step two of a seven-step form, with rows for each parent's name and occupation, siblings, family background, ancestral origin, and an "about family" box. There's no separate row for family type, income or relatives, so if you want them, they go in the about-family box.

If a parent is helping, paid plans let you invite them to the profile as an editor so they can fill in these rows themselves. The writing assistant on those plans also drafts the family description, which gives you something to edit rather than an empty box.

The biodata sits at one link that stays the same when you edit it, so when a sibling gets married or a parent retires, the families who already have the link see the current version.

Before you send it, read the family section as a stranger would. Could they picture the household? Would anyone in it be unhappy with how they've been described? If the answers are yes and no, it's done.