A long time ago I married Aela the Huntress and she has resided in many of my homes - Markarth, Solitude, Whiterun, Riften, Windhelm. Once I started Hearthfire, I was instructed to remodel Breezehome to accomodate a children's bedroom. I also adopted two girls from the orphanage in Riften - Runa Fair-Shield and Lucia. Once I had adopted them, Aela appeared immediately in Breezehome (she had been residing in Markarth) along with the kids.

I received land and built Heljarchen Hall, loaded it with children's stuff, and practically maxed it out. I then went back to Breezehome and spoke to Aela about the kids. She said Breezehome was fine but we needed a bigger place for the kids. In the dialog I selected I said we should move to a new home (no mention of the name of the home). She said she'll see me there, but didn't leave.

Getting frustrated, I did some more quests, and lo and behold, the Jarl of Windhelm offered me Hjerim for purchase (again). Since I had already purchased it years ago, I decided to do it again to see what happens. Once furnished, including children's stuff (these were offered in the steward's dialog for the first time), I returned to Breezehome and talked to Aela.

This time the dialog for moving to Hjerim by name was there but asking 'how the kids were' was not. If I said we should move to Hjerim, Aela left but the kids remained in Breezehome. The dialog for moving to Heljarchen Hall was there but only as 'I have a new home you'd like' which has been there all along.

So, how do I get both Aela and the kids to move, either to Hjerim or to Heljarchen Hall or anywhere?

Or am I just going to have to leave them in Breezehome?

You do have 2 beds and a chest for their clothing?

I do.

In HH, you have to have the two beds in either the bedroom or upper main hall. If in bedroom, you must have the children's chests at the end of each bed, upper main hall you have to have the dresser between the two single beds. If you don't have one or the other of these you can't move the kids there.

Edited for typos.

In HH the chests are at the foot of the kid's beds and they are located in the lower bedroom.

They're teenagers right?

Your children should automatically move when your wife does, did you actually go to which ever house you moved them to and wait? Which platform are you playing the game on?

I'm playing the PC version.

Yes, I went to Hjerim and waited. Aela turned up but the kids didn't. Went to Breezehome and they were there. Told Aela to go back to Breezehome and she did. Waited there until daylight, asked Aela to move to Hjerim and, again, she did but not the kids. She even goes to Jorrvaskr, but without the kids. And HH is still not an option of a place to move, just 'I have a new house you'd like'.

Is there a mission critical item that I absolutely need crafted or found or purchased that Hearthfire needs to get everybody to move? I'm at wits end here.

Also, I have the 'Spouse to custom home' mod and and the 'Hearthfire Moving Family Bugfix' mod. I tried 'Spouse' loading first after Hearthfire, 'Moving Family' first after Hearthfire, only 'Moving Family' (no dialog options regarding kids in this mode) loading, only 'Spouse' loading (no specific house name in the dialog here) and neither loading. None of these configurations have allowed any kids movement beyond Breezehome.

Have you tried disabling the 'Spouse to custom home mod'. Actually I would just disable both mods, you should not need a bug fix if you are not causing the bug with mods not compatible with Hearthfire.

The reson you are having problems is because of the mod "spouses live anywhere".I used to use this mod and it created massive problems in hearthfire.Get rid of this mod.Unnistall hearthhfire and then reintall it.This will fix the problem,though I don't know how long you have been using the "spouse move" mod.You may have to find a save before you installed this mod to not lose some of youre existing content(which can then snowball and create more problems).I doubt it will be that severe ,though,it is possible.


Also,although the spouse moves anywhere mod is fun.You're spouse will only live in one cell or area.This means thhat you're spouse will never go upstairs or outside or basically anywhere outside of the cell you activate the mod.So it is kinda limited.

Make sure you have no mods that affect movement or clothing when you reinstall Hearthfire.Start to reinstall you're mods one at a time once you get you're family situated.I cannot move my family out of my lakeveiw home unless I want to revert to a save some 40 hours ago( though I re-married as well).This is fine though, as I decided that Lakeveiw would be my main family home.Would be nice to move the family from time to time...but so is the risk in using mods.

Agan reintall Hearthfire with no mods(not even family bug fix).Then work from there.

Since I have restarted the Hearthfire quests more than once to try to fix this issue, I will go ahead and un-install the mods and un-install and re-install Hearthfire. At this point, losing something won't be an issue.

Thanks for all your replies. If this doesn't work, I'll be back.

Well even if it does work, would be nice to know, it would help the next person who has the same problem.

Yeah, I meant that I'd reply positive or negative as to what worked.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Preteens. All Skyrim kids are about 9-11 years old. No teens or toddlers.

I'm having a similar prob on xbox. I can't get Jordis to leave Lakeview Manor and can't get Lucia and Sofia out of breezehome. Can't figure out how to unite my family

How did you get Jordis to Lakeview Manor? Since presumably she should consider Breezehome as her home.

She was steward of Lakeview. Can't get her to leave. She says she'll move to breezehome but then doesn't do it.

You should not have made the wife a steward of a house, but since she has the option to move, did you leave and give her a chance to relocate? Nothing will change while you are there. Making her the steward of a house is not I think going to change that to the family home, which is probably still Breezehome. Perhaps you should try moving her to some other house and seeing if the children move.

If you have a savegame before you made her steward, I would just go back to that, and make someone else steward of Lakeview Manor.

Stewards and wives and unsupervised little girls... o what a tangled web we weave.