>I cannot check VFP5 now (have just VFP3 on hand), but would you consider to make small change in your data design. Now you have claimant_record and claim_status tables and some records in claimant_records don't have matches in claim_status. Why cannot you provide that match is always available : just add record claim_status.code=0 ("unknown") for 'non-matched' and handle it nicely on front-end.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Does this mean I could create record in my claim_status.table that has a value of 0 (zero) for the code field? And then when a new record is added in my claimant_record table if no value is entered for the claim_status field I could have it default to 0 (zero)?

Jeff