Staff go to the student record for a quick picture of the student's family. The living status of parent relations cannot be assumed from home address. (Separated parents can live together, and married parents can live in different countries.) It is a lot of steps to click through to parent A, scroll down to see living status, click the back button to get to the student, and if parent A didn't have a living status you need to check parent B as well...

Too many steps - people don't do it, even when they should.