I honestly believe they made the retirement option a pop up on purpose. The purpose being to force you to retire the sim., especially since they are not aging them like on the PC version. I feel like after you reject the pop up then they should stop offering it as a pop up and wait for you to manually choose the option. I also hate the limitation on how many people you can have living in the house. Even worse is having to ask another player if their Sim can live with you once you're married.
@Whol3NothaL3v3l EA did change the retirement to where you have to wait 5 days before getting the retirement notice. Retirement is part of the game. You don't have to retire them if you don't want to. You earn heirlooms when you retire your sims which gives your sims new traits as you progress. This game is focused on generational play. The more you retire and move on and promote the next generation, the more rewards you earn.
If you don't want to even get a retirement notice, don't give your sim their last trait. The last trait is what triggers the retirement notice which you will get 5 days after you give your sim the last trait.
There is a limit on how many sims due to performance issues. Your permitted 12 sims. 4 active and 8 non active . The 8 non active is children waiting to be promoted and or retired sims.
When you retire a sim, they hang around your house for 5 days. They can mentor your active sims in career or hobby . You earn heirloom tickets for these events. Once the 5 days is up your retired sims get a birthday cake, they leave your game and take their place in the family portrait. The game purges them do to performance issues so you can't contact the retired sim once they leave the game.
When you marry a sim you don't have to take that sim into your game. You can still have children with that sim once your at level 3 relationship or any sim you are at level 3 relationship with.
Should you want to marry another player's sim and take that sim in your game, there is a sim trade thread. Players will offer their sims to other players so you don't run into the issue of asking another player for their sim to where that player may decline giving you their sim. When you ask another player for their sim to move in, that player will loose their sim.
When you have permission from another player to take their sim in your game, the original sim gets retired in the original owner's game . They leave the original owner an heirloom. The person taking this sim will get a copy of the sim. You play that sim to retirement and you also get an heirloom.
