@Ecnerwal, I don't think she will be touching wiring again. I find it very interesting but I hate doing electrical work myself because I know nothing about it and the stakes seem very high if I get it wrong. I was actually wondering if it would be possible to take an electricians course part time and become a certified electrician as a second job. There was an issue with 3 MWBCs in our kitchen, the breaker kept tripping and I think it caused one of the breakers to fail and now electricity is always flowing to one of the wires. We capped them all individually until an electrician can look.

@Mark, Thank you so much Mark for taking the time to answer my question. It didn't seem to be very popular so I'm rewording it so be more specific. My spouse did make that mistake with 3 MWBCs and the breaker did indeed trip, though I think that it damaged the breaker(s) because even after they tripped, one wire still had electricity. I capped all three wires (individually) and wrapped then ends in electric tape while waiting for an electrician to come have a look.

@kreemowheet, Thank you for the response, I worry because, I didn't originally do the work, my spouse did without my knowledge and when things stopped working, she asked me to fix it. I know nothing about electricity but I learned quite a bit and fixed everything. However, in some cases, there were half receptacles connected to switches and she didn't remove the connecting tab between the hot wires. She used the receptacles for a couple of days and nothing went wrong and the breakers didn't trip. Again, I fixed the problem but I wanted to make sure there was no damage to the wires.

@Mark Hi Mark, the problem is the my spouse decided to change the outlets on her own without knowing what she was doing. In some cases there were half receptacles that were connected to switches and she didn't remove the tab for the hot wires. The way these were wired was that they were on a single breaker (two receptacles were on 1 breaker and 1 was on a separate breaker) and neither breaker went off. I have since corrected the problem but I'm worried that some stuff is going on behind the walls. I don't smell any smoke, the wires in the boxes look perfect.

@manassehkatz, The wires are in cables (one cable with the black, white, red, and ground).

@Matt S, with regards to your question "Are you sure there isn't another black wire somewhere in the box?", there is a nut and a some wires, I think it's a pigtail. I also closed the breaker and checked the light switch and everything seems to be on the same circuit so that's good.

@crip659 I'm not an electrician or even very good with electricity so I apologize if I use the wrong terminology or might be slow to catch on. I don't think they are on separate circuits, when I shut the breaker for that receptacle, I think they both go out. I'll double check to make sure as the light switch was always off and I never checked. with it on specifically.

@Huesmann, Thank you for the response. No, I don't mean crossing them in that manner, all of my hot wires are on the brass side and my neutral wires are on the silver side. I mean if you have a cable coming in from the fuse box and another cable going out to another receptacle, the first cable, the black wire is connected to the top brass screw and the white wire is connected to the bottom silver screw and the cable going out has the black wire going to the bottom brass screw and the white wire is connected to the top silver screw.

I removed the connector when there was a switch involved but I didn't remove the connector if the receptacle seemed to b wired in a series.

Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond. This is good news. On the silver side, the connector is there and in some cases, the connector on the bronze side is there. Only in the case of a red wire (switch) did I remove the connector. My understanding is that the residual electricity would flow either from the bottom screw to the top or visa versa and wouldn't change anything. But again, I'm not an electrician and assumptions can be wrong so I wanted to make sure.

Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond. Yes, I used a three light tester and they all registered as okay. What I mean is that there are two silver screws, two bronze screws, and a ground. So far as I can tell the ground is fine, even according to the tester. What I mean is the white wire from one cable is connect to the top silver screw and the black wire is connected to the bottom bronze screw. The next cable going to the other receptacle has the white wire to the bottom silver screw and the black wire connected to the top bronze screw.