Possible to force an adoption?

[caius britannicus]

Is it possible to force an adoption at the start of the campaign? In addition to this, is it possible to have a dead male as the head of the family tree? I'm trying to get it so there is a family member that is older than the faction leader but also part of the family tree (and not his father), so that if the faction leader is killed in battle the player can still name the other family member the faction heir and subsequently faction leader. I assumed that to create a dead head of the family tree I would have to use the character record. and so I used the following entry

Note all names used are valid working names.

character_record		Baldwin, 	male, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 80, dead, never_a_leader
character_record		Margareta, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 80, alive, never_a_leader
character_record		Sibylla, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 27, alive, never_a_leader
character_record		Isabella, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 15, alive, never_a_leader
character_record		Isabella_of_Hainaut, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 17, alive, never_a_leader
character_record		Berengaria, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 20, alive, never_a_leader
character_record		Beatrice, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 39, dead, never_a_leader

Then set up the relatives like so:

relative	Baldwin,Margareta,	Guy_of_Lusignan,	Conrad_of_Montferrat,	Philippe_II,	Frederick_Barbarossa,	Richard_Plantagenet, end
relative 	Guy_of_Lusignan, Sibylla, end
relative	Conrad_of_Montferrat, Isabella, end
relative	Philippe_II,Isabella_of_Hainaut, end
relative	Frederick_Barbarossa,Beatrice, end
relative 	Richard_Plantagenet,Berengaria, end

Where Guy, Conrad, Philippe, Frederick and Richard are all named generals.

However this setup gives me a kick back on trying to load the campaign. At first there were some problems because if a father or mother is not at least 15 years older than their son it also causes kick backs. Now however Barbarossa is 65 and his parents are both 80 so theres no age conflict. I could have swore I have seen dead family members from the start of the campaign before. Is there something I am missing? Is "dead" rather than "alive" not a valid entry?