What is the recommended way to flag a contact as being deceased in the Contacts app on Lion or Mountain Lion?

Solution 1:

I've had the same "need." I guess we all do sooner or later. Here's what I did.

Card menu > Add Field > Dates. Then select the Date field drop down in the contact and select custom.

You can also change the general new contact template in the same Cart menu.

I hope this helps.

Solution 2:

As CDK suggests, my solution was adding a new custom date.

My problem was that I didn't want to be reminded with this person's birthday every year. Finally, I deleted the birthday and added a new custom date for "birth", so it's not recognized by iCal and there are no more notifications about it.

Solution 3:

You could also add a special symbol to the contact’s comments (I use «†», also known as U+2020 DAGGER), and then create a smart group, where the criterion is Note > contains > † (Alt-t).