In posting my original question: "If both my mother and myself have tested, can I match with someone from a known ancestral line of hers while she does NOT? OR, would the match mean that I MUST be related to this person through my paternal line?" I generated some disagreement from the experts and much discussion. Unfortunately, I'm still confused. Recently, I've gotten a 'strong' cousin match with a 'cousin' who does NOT match with my mother. In this case, we have a cM chain of 23.88 and 4575 matching SNP, for an estimated 3rd cousin match. When examining his family tree, everything overwhelmingly points to a MATERNAL connection so far (but no real smoking gun, so to speak). It IS possible I'm missing a paternal surname, however. I'm having this situation turn up occasionally with other cousins as well. Does this mean that Mom and Dad have cousins in common? OR, am I to understand, as you all have tried to explain, that it is NOT possible that genes 'skip' a generation, so I must be missing the paternal connection? Since we are a strong match, the whole IBS issue is moot, right?