Add In-Laws to our Family and iCloud plan

My family of 4 is doing Family Sharing and my account is primary. We all share iCloud storage.

My wife’s parents (my in laws) are getting up in age and it now makes sense to add them to our Family share and thus our iCloud plan.

To do this, I was planning on

  1. disabling the Family share the two of them had
  2. Disabling their shared iCloud.
  3. Inviting them to my family’s Family Share, which then adds them to our iCloud.

Is this right? Anything else I should consider or be aware of?

I could be wrong, but I don’t think you need to do that. When you disable their family share, it will create iCloud plans for each of them: when they joins your family, it just moves their iCloud Drive and sync into your existing family share.

See Share iCloud+ with your family - Apple Support

When you share iCloud+, any family members using the free 5GB plan are added to your family plan automatically.

If a family member is already paying for their own iCloud+ plan, they can choose to switch to your plan or keep their own and still remain part of the family. When they switch to the shared family plan, they get a refund for the remainder of their personal plan. They can’t keep their current plan and use the shared family plan at the same time.

Family plans are limited to 6 people, so you should be fine there.

I do wish that Family Sharing was a bit more flexible. One thing to know is that if they have any iTunes Cards they got as gifts, or have on their account, once Family Sharing is set up, they cannot use them (that I can figure out). We had my daughter on FS until she realized that the music she wanted to buy, or a movie she wanted to rent, could not be deducted from her account. Just make sure they clean out their positive balance, if they have any, before the merge.

Thanks! This is helpful!

This is not my understanding. As long as Share Purchases is turned off, each member’s purchases are charged to their own payment method.

I speak from experience; as soon as I turned off Share Purchases, my daughter had to use her own debit card to pay for her TikTok promotions.

Unfortunately, there is no way to turn off the Organizer from paying for everyone’s purchases while still allowing all members to share purchases. One benefit of Shared Purchases, for example, is that most apps in the iOS and macOS App Stores allow all the members of the Family to share a single software license.

As I understand, there is only one way that a Family member pay individually while Share Purchases is turned on. Purchases first use any funds on the individual’s account and then use the Organizer’s payment method for the remainder. Thus, the work around is to add sufficient funds to an individual’s Apple ID before they make a purchase.

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