Tell Me About Your Emergency Contacts

Just a short rant today, continuing in the vein of web and electronic form design.

In the past 7 days, I have had to assist multiple clients with the following fields:

Emergency Contacts
Contact Name
Contact Relationship
Contact Phone

Now, this looks like it should be SO easy, but it evidently isn't.

One client wants to know the type of phone (uhm, does it really matter anymore!?)

and all clients want you to define your relationship to your emergency contact.

Now, I don't understand why this is necessary in the first place.

Does this change the fact that they're going to be contacted in something bad happens to you?

No

Does this change in anyway anything about them being your emergency contact and responsible for you in case of emergency?

No

So, why the F#@$ does it matter?

To make matters worse, one client actually has defined the relationships down to the following:

Husband
Wife
Son
Daughter
Aunt
Uncle
Grandmother
Grandfather
Friend

 Now, this is a semi-thorough list of familial relationships, though it skews the answers towards the elderly being in charge of the youngin's...which, let's face it, isn't necessarily the case.  With life expectancies increasing, it is not uncommon that a grandchild would be the emergency contact for an (unfortunately) employed octogenarian.

And, what about other types of emergency contacts?

I had one friend of mine have to go and identify the dead body of their employee following a bar fight.

So, not exactly a "friend" there...more of a boss situation...

And what about orphans?  Where's the "social worker" option?

Or, again unfortunately, what about parole officers?

When designing these forms, please take into account life situations OTHER than your own.  Not everyone is as fortunate to live your life.