I have used the static for testing; so I never noticed that they were so restricted in what they did as I was controlling them all the time.
I had used it in this family because three times I lost the game, twice because I didn't remember to save and the game froze on me, after three hours of playing. Once was when I had sent my sim to China and she disappeared, goofed and saved it and then had to go back to an earlier save, which had been quite some time back.
So, put them on static to catch up to where I had been.
@Wai,
I don't have mods or CC, so that can't be the reason. The one family, which had the sim stuck, she is now free, tried moving the family and then sent them back to the house, it worked this time. Have tried it before with another problem and it didn't work, so wasn't expecting it to this time.
I did the cleaning of the cache, DCbackup, followed the instructions here so that could have been the reason it worked this time. But, still can't send them to a foreign country. Never had it before I installed IP, so wondering if that could be the cause, but don't see how, really.
Won't know if they will continue to disappear or if other sims will continue to disappear as I played less than half an hour, testing to see if my sim was free and would stay free. Crossing my fingers she won't get stuck again.