Eligibility

Do You Qualify?

In order to establish your claim of citizenship, you'll need documents (vital records) supporting the descent of each person in your line back to the parent or grandparent you are claiming citizenship through. For applicants born outside Italy claiming citizenship by descent (scenarios 2-4 below), you'll also need documents establishing whether and when your LIBRA (Last Italian-Born and Registered Ascendent) naturalized, showing that he or she did not lose Italian citizenship before the next person in your line became an adult. In addition, all recognized Italian citizens are required to keep their home comune up-to-date with any changes in their status, such as marriage, divorce, or the birth of their children.

While jure sanguinis means "right of blood", DNA is not acceptable proof to the consulate and they don't want to see it.

Each consulate (or comune) establishes a list of the documents that they will require to support your application. Some, but not all, consulates list these documents on their websites, but these lists are not always accurate and they are subject to change. In the Facebook group, we have may posts detailing what documents were required during appointment at various consulates.

Reference the chart below for the most common scenarios:

Overview of Italian Citizenship by Descent

Overview of Jure Sanguinis

Italian citizenship is based on the principle of jus sanguinis (Latin: “right of blood”), which means that the child of an Italian citizen is an Italian citizen from birth. This is in contrast to most New World countries like the US, Canada, and Brazil that generally base citizenship on jus solis (“right of soil”), which means a child born in the country is a citizen of that country.

In order for the Italian government to acknowledge and treat a person as a citizen, that person’s birth must be registered in a municipality (comune) in Italy. While referred to as blood citizenship, for those born abroad, there are a number of qualifying factors that we will cover here and Italian citizenship is only effective when qualifying foreign births have been registered in Italy. So, simply having Italian "blood" (ancestry) does not necessarily qualify someone born outside Italy as an Italian citizen

If an applicant for recognition satisfies the standard of proof (generally a set of documents with the proper certifications) demanded by the consulate (or comune) that covers the place where that person resides (i.e. permanent residency), that person's birth (and current and previous marriages and divorces, if applicable) will be registered in Italy and that person's Italian citizenship will be acknowledged by the Italian government.

Myth Buster - Origins of Italy's Jure Sanguinis Laws

Often articles and websites that talk about the JS path to Italian citizenship have incorrect assertions as to the purpose and origins. Many claim that this is some new law that was introduced in 1992 in an effort to boost the dwindling Italian population. Some take it a step further and assert that it is to entice investment in Italy and grow the income tax base.

JS has been the defining foundation of Italy's citizenship laws since first becoming a country. It is in book 1 of the 1865 Civil Code. In very simple, succinct terms, it defines citizenship as being derived from the father. It also defines the few conditions in which one would lose citizenship, including acquiring another citizenship. There have been a number of modifications over the years, such as equal treatment for women (1948) which was the foundation for allowing women to pass citizenship to their children, and law 36/2025 that introduced generational limits for claims by those born abroad. The loss of Italian citizenship by naturalizing in another country was eliminated in 1992 through a rewrite of the law. This 1992 law is often misunderstood to be the dawn of JS. However, passage of Italian citizenship through JS and the ability for estranged descendents to claim it has been in existence all along.

As for the purpose for JS as a foundation, it is a principle that predates Italy and is common amongst many European countries. In fact, citizenship by birth in a country as a fundamental rule is very much a New World concept that came into place in countries like Australia, US, and Canada after European occupation; independence from Europe dictated a different way of defining citizenship for those settling in these new nations and to define conditions for those of other nations settling there to be (or not) citizens. In other words, JS is a long-held European custom.

Do you qualify?

In order to determine whether you are eligible to claim jus sanguinis Italian citizenship, you have to have had a parent or grandparent who was exclusively Italian at birth—no other citizenship, even by birth in a jus solis country like the US. Effectively, with some very rare exceptions, you must have had a parent or grandparent who was an Italian citizen born in Italy. 

We’ll refer here to such ancestor as your “Last Italy-Born and Registered Ancestor” or LIBRA. In principle you can (and ultimately will) establish that this person was an Italian citizen by obtaining his or her birth certificate, and if necessary certificate of citizenship, from Italy. From your LIBRA you then construct a chain from parent to child down to you, establishing that each can be shown to have passed on Italian citizenship to the next person in your line. (We’ll refer to this line as your “Italian line” or “direct line.” Keep in mind that you may have other ancestors who are Italian but not in your line. Moreover, you may even have more than one viable line to a LIBRA, in which case you can claim citizenship through either line.)

If your parent is your LIBRA, you’ll need to establish that your parent was exclusively an Italian citizen at the time of your birth parent and remained so until you became an adult.

If your LIBRA is a grandparent, regardless of whether your parent formally claimed Italian citizenship, you’ll need to establish that your parent inherited Italian citizenship at birth from his or her parent AND that your grandparent remained exclusively an Italian citizen until your parent became an adult. You will then need to prove that you are eligible to claim that citizenship from your parent, meaning that your parent did nothing that would have terminated his or her citizenship or eligibility to claim it.

As of May 24, 2025 claims for citizenship by descent for those born outside Italy can be made no further back than a grandparent LIBRA who was exclusively Italian by birth. This generational limit does not apply to consulate appointments made prior to that date.

Myth Buster - Inheriting Citizenship from a Distant Ancestor

Casually speaking, descendants who have claimed JS through some distant ancestor, say a great grandfather, will say they got their Italian citizenship from great grandfather. While somewhat accurate, this can mislead others who are interested in doing the same because it leaves out important details of how citizenship is actually passed-down.

Italian citizenship can only be passed from parent to child and only at birth (except for a few special circumstances). The reason many of us have to go back to a grandparent to be recognized is because our parents may never have been formally recognized as Italian citizens. So, when you apply for citizenship through a grandparent, you are essentially proving that your parent inherited Italian citizenship from his or her parent at birth and did not lose citizenship before their child (you) became an adult. Therefore, your parent was technically an Italian citizen when you were born and passed that citizenship to you. You cannot "skip" generations that did not qualify in order to claim citizenship directly from an ancestor other than your parent.

Another assumption that is often made is that because a relative was recognized with Italian citizenship JS that another relative with the same common Italian ancestor qualifies. Not necessarily.

As stated above, you can only inherit Italian citizenship from a parent. Your parent must have qualified for Italian citizenship from his or her parent at birth (or through marriage) through the time when you were born in order for you to qualify. Unfortunately, there are many situations where siblings of the same parent are split between qualifying and not, due to when parent lost Italian citizenship in relation to their births.

Yet another misunderstanding has to do with parents who lost Italian citizenship by acquiring another citizenship before 1992. There is a process for reacquisition of Italian citizenship for those who lost it in the past (see information in our Reacquisition section). However, reacquisition will not resolve the inability for children to claim JS citizenship if they were born while the parent was not an Italian citizen.

The principles of Italian citizenship are the following:

ACQUIRING CITIZENSHIP

• A child would be an Italian citizen from birth if:
  1. The father was Italian at the time of birth and acknowledged paternity (by, e.g., the father appearing on the child's birth cert as the informant).
  2. The mother was Italian at the time of birth and the child was born on or after 1 Jan 1948. (This is the so-called 1948 rule; see below for a more in-depth discussion.)
  3. The mother was Italian at the time of birth and the father was either unknown or possessed a citizenship that was not passed to the child.
  4. The child was born in Italy to unknown parents.
• Everyone who was a citizen of one of the predecessor states of Italy at the time of the founding of the country on 17 March 1861 automatically became a citizen of Italy. This was retroactively true even for former citizens of some states that merged with Italy later, such as the Papal States.
• Before 27 April 1983, foreign women automatically became Italian citizens upon marriage to an Italian man. This can be helpful if the husband later lost Italian citizenship by naturalizing in another country. In terms of the US, after 22 September 1922 when the US Cable Act was instituted, the wife of an Italian would not automatically naturalize with the husband. So, for an Italian couple where the husband naturalized after the Cable Act, the wife maintained Italian citizenship unless she, herself, acquired another citizenship. This holds true, even if the wife was not of Italian descent at all, so long as she married while the husband was still Italian. (Before the Cable Act, American women lost US citizenship upon marriage to a foreign male. After the Cable Act, they had to have naturalized on their own to reacquire US citizenship. Those who did lost Italian citizenship at that point.)
• Naturalization: Of course one can also naturalize as an Italian citizen, but in that case there would be a record of the naturalization in Italy already and the recognition of that person's citizenship would be unnecessary.
• A non-emancipated minor child of a man who acquired or reacquired Italian citizenship would automatically acquire Italian citizenship as well, so long as the child was not both living abroad and possessing a foreign citizenship.
• Note: Mere birth in Italy does not automatically confer citizenship (unless the parents are unknown), so in principle a birth certificate from Italy does not necessarily prove that someone was an Italian citizen. In practice, for an ancestor who was born in Italy decades ago, so long as at least one parent (the father, if birth before 1948) has an Italian name, a consulate or comune will generally accept the birth certificate as sufficient proof that the person was Italian, but occasionally they also request a certificate of citizenship, which comuni will also issue.

Myth Busters - Passage of Citizenship To/From Females

There are many misunderstandings about women's ability to pass and receive citizenship. Simply stated, any child born before the Italian constitution went into effect on 1-Jan-1948 could not inherit citizenship from his or her mother. It makes no difference when the mother was born (except for obvious physical limitations). It also makes no difference whether the child was male or female.

Caveats: In extremely rare cases where the father was unknown or the child would have been otherwise stateless, the child would inherit the mother's citizenship. Additionally, the inability for a mother to pass citizenship to her children before 1948 has been successfully challenged thousands of times in Italian court. The constitutional provision allowing passage of citizenship from 1948 forward has not been amended to affect births prior, so these cases must continue to be challenged in the Italian courts. (In other words, the consulates must follow the law based on when it went into effect and, therefore, cannot process an application through a child born to a female born before 1948.) See the 1948 Rule below and 1948 under the main menu for more details.

LOSS OF CITIZENSHIP

Italian citizenship can be lost in the following ways:

• By naturalizing voluntarily as an adult (age 18 and over after 10 March 1975, age 21 and over before then) in a foreign country before 15 August 1992.
• By renouncing one's citizenship abroad in front of an Italian diplomat or consular official OR stating the intention to renounce one's citizenship to a government official while still residing in Italy and then moving abroad within 1 year.
• By continuing to serve in a foreign government or military after being ordered to cease by the Italian government and failing to do so within a specified time period. After 15 August 1992, one can also lose Italian citizenship by serving in a foreign military at war with Italy.
• For an Italian woman,
  1. by marrying, and residing with, a foreign man, before 1 January 1948, whose citizenship is automatically transmitted to the woman by marriage.
  2. by the loss of Italian citizenship of her husband, with whom she resides, before 1 January 1948, if she also posses another citizenship (and thus would not be rendered stateless by losing Italian citizenship).
• For an Italian minor child, by the loss of citizenship of the father or legal guardian (after 27 April 1983, of both parents), if the child resides with the father or guardian abroad, if the child is not emancipated, and if the child possesses a foreign nationality. An exception to this rule was also made if the mother was the guardian and she lost citizenship by virtue of a new marriage after the death of the child's father.

The way these rules are used in practice is that you begin with your LIRA. Then you check that your LIRA, before his or her child (the next person in your line) reached adulthood, had not lost Italian citizenship (generally by naturalization of the LIRA, the LIRA's spouse if the LIRA is a woman, or the LIRA's parent if the LIRA moved abroad as a child) and your LIRA was a man if this birth occurred before 1948. If these conditions are satisfied, the next person in your line (the LIRA's child) was also an Italian citizen from birth and retained that citizenship as an adult. Next you repeat the procedure for the next person in your line, verifying that the Italian parent had not lost citizenship by the time the child reached adulthood and that that parent was not a woman if the child was born before 1948. Continue in this way until you arrive at your own birth. If every person in your line was an Italian citizen who could pass on citizenship at the time of the birth of the next person in your line and did not lose Italian citizenship while their child was a minor, you are (or were) a citizen from birth.

If you have Italian ancestry but fail to be an Italian citizen by birth, it is usually because your line fails for one of the following reasons:

1. Your LIRA naturalized as a citizen of a new country (usually, your home country) before the next person in your line reached adulthood.
2. Your LIRA immigrated to a new country (usually, your home country) as a child and naturalized while still a minor and your LIRA's Italian father (or mother if the father was not Italian) also naturalized. (These 2 naturalizations didn't have to occur simultaneously, so long as they both happened while the child was a minor.)
3. Your line includes someone who was born before 1948 to an Italian mother but not Italian father (the 1948 rule).
4. Your line includes an Italian woman who married a foreign man (and acquired his citizenship) before 1948 and before the birth of the next person in you line.
5. Your line includes an Italian woman whose Italian husband naturalized before 1948 and before the next person in your line reached adulthood AND she automatically acquired his new citizenship.

Note that the last 3 cases apply only to lines that include women before 1948, while 5 out of 6 cases involve naturalization. However, in the US, derivative citizenship through marriage ended 22 September 1922, so Italian women could not lose citizenship by marrying a US citizen or if their husbands became US citizens from that point forward. You can see that naturalization status - determining whether an ancestor naturalized and when - is one of the keys to the whole process. This is why consulates place so much emphasis on verifying that someone did or did not naturalize, which can be very difficult for ancestors who immigrated a century ago or earlier.

The 1912 Rule

Effective October 3, 2024, a provision in the 1912 citizenship law was reinterpreted by MAECI in accordance with recent Cassazione (Italian supreme court) rulings. The 1912 rule partially abolished loss of citizenship for minor children that existed under the previous law, the Civil Code of 1865. Essentially, this rule that was in effect from June 13, 1912 to October 3, 2024 allowed minor children who were born in a Jure Soli country (one that grants citizenship based on birth in the country, such as the US and Australia) to retain Italian citizenship if their parent naturalized in that foreign country. This meant that for descendents of Italian immigrants to the US, it was only necessary to prove that the immigrant did not naturalize before their US-born child was born. Because of the 2024 reinterpretation, it is possible that family members were recognized under the prior interpretation, while others (siblings, cousins, etc.) seeking recognition from October 3, 2024 forward would not be eligible to apply through a consulate or comune if their LIRA naturalized while the child was a minor.

The 1948 Rule

The 1948 rule is the result of discriminatory provisions in previous laws being overturned by the Constitution of 1948 that granted equal rights to women.

Over the last decade there have been a number of lawsuits in Italian courts by people claiming that the prior laws discriminated against their female ancestors and thus that these ancestors should not have lost citizenship through marriage and should have received the right to retroactively pass on citizenship to their children born before 1948. Thousands of these cases have been successful and the success rate is high as well.

If your line does not work because of a 1948 rule violation (or a loss of citizenship by a female ancestor due to a marriage), you may want to pursue a court case in Italian court to claim citizenship. Be warned, though, that it can be expensive (you do have to hire an Italian lawyer experienced in these sorts of cases) and time consuming, and there is no guarantee of success. At the present time you cannot be successful applying at a consulate with a 1948 rule violation - you can only achieve recognition through such a line via legal action.

So do I qualify or not?

After examining the above rules and your family history, you can arrive at one of the following conclusions:

1. You qualify as a citizen. In this case, you should apply (if you wish).

2. You may qualify, but you're not sure because you lack certain information, such as whether an ancestor naturalized or the date of such naturalization if it occurred. In this case, you may as well make an appointment to apply while you continue to search for this information.

3. You clearly do not qualify, because an ancestor naturalized before the next person in your line became an adult. In this case, it is advisable not to apply because you will certainly be rejected at any consulate.

4. You fail to qualify, because of the 1948 rule, or because a female ancestor lost her Italian citizenship due to a marriage. In this case, if you wish to pursue this, you should file suit in Italian court, or wait until the law is changed (if ever).

5. You fail to qualify, because of the 1912 rule no longer applies. In this case, if you wish to try, you could seek recognition of citizenship through the Italian regional court where your LIRA came from. Since about 2000, the courts began inconsistently denying cases where the Jure Soli-born child was a minor when his or her parent (the LIRA) naturalized. Despite the Cassazione court ruling on the side of loss of citizenship for minor children, it is not necessarily precedent-setting and the lower courts can continue to rule that a minor's Italian citizenship was protected.

6. You are the child of your LIRA and your parent naturalized when you were a minor. If this is the case, you were considered an Italian citizen at birth, but lost it when your parent naturalized. You can reacquire Italian citizenship in accordance with provisions in the 1992 law.

7. You can't determine whether you qualify or not because your case is too complicated. In this case, you should ask experts whether they think you qualify, and if there still is no consensus, apply at a consulate if you wish, being cognizant that you may be rejected.

-----IMPORTANT NOTE-----
DNA is not relevant to claims for citizenship. You must meet the requirements based on Italian laws, proving passage of citizenship from your LIRA through each subsequent descendent to you. The consulate does not want or care to see DNA results/evidence.

Date: 1948 - The Italian Republic and Women’s Rights to Pass Citizenship

January 1, 1948

Italy's new post-war constitution takes effect. Starting on this day (according to the Interior and Foreign Ministry legal interpretations), Italian mothers could pass Italian citizenship to their children independently of the father. Sons and daughters born or adopted* prior to this day had to have an Italian father in order to acquire Italian citizenship jure sanguinis (unless the father was unknown).

CAUTION: Do not look at the date of birth of the parent when considering this rule. Look at the date of birth of the child (next in line, of either gender) then consider the gender of that child's parent. It's perfectly fine for Italian mothers to be born before 1948 as long as their children (male or female) are born January 1, 1948 or later. (And see below about Italian courts.)

Also, prior to this day, one way an Italian woman lost her Italian citizenship was when she married a foreign husband and that country granted citizenship to her automatically as a result of marriage. (The U.S., for example, granted automatic citizenship to non-American women marrying American men until the Cable Act which went into effect on September 22, 1922.) Starting on January 1, 1948, an Italian woman could never lose her Italian citizenship solely as a result of marrying a foreign man. (She had to take some other, separate action, such as naturalization, to lose her citizenship.)

Italian authorities improperly applied this part of the 1948 constitution for many years. A woman who lost her Italian citizenship solely because she married a foreign man can immediately reclaim Italian citizenship by making a simple declaration at a local consulate. Her descendants (born on or after January 1, 1948) only retain their Italian citizenship if the marriage to a foreigner occurred on or after January 1, 1948.

Example: Paulina, an Italian citizen, emigrated to the United States in 1938 and never naturalized. She married a U.S. citizen in 1944, but the U.S. stopped granting foreign women automatic citizenship through marriage in 1922. Paulina had two children: Alice, born in 1946, and George, born in 1948. George was born an Italian citizen, but Alice was not (according to Interior Ministry legal interpretations).

Fighting a 1948 Case in Court. Note that, starting in 2009, many plaintiffs have won cases in Italian courts arguing that the 1948 constitution was retroactive and applied to all women, including Italian citizen-mothers who had given birth to children before 1948. Consequently these plaintiffs have been able to win citizenship recognition through older maternal ancestries than the Interior Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs currently accept.

Discrepancies on Documents

Critical to establishing your claim to Italian citizenship is proving through vital records that your are descended from your Italian ancestor born in Italy. In order to do so, the officer reviewing your documents needs to feel certain that each person in your line to this Italian ancestor was descended from the prior. They will consider all the information available on the documents, particularly birth and marriage certificates for each generation, comparing especially birth dates, names of parents, and locations they were born and married in. If there are major discrepancies across these documents, such as someone who was born by one name appears as the parent on the birth certificate of the next person in the line of descent as a completely different name with no clear evidence that they are the same person, you will probably run into problems.

When you have discrepancies, whether you should address them in advance of your consulate appointment to submit your application and how you should deal with them will depend on several factors. Key factors include where you will be applying, where the documents are from, how much money and effort you are willing to put into addressing them, and how important it is for you that you increase your chances of immediate application acceptance.

What should be addressed in advance of your consulate appointment to present your case? Generally, discrepancies on the documents pertaining directly to the applicant (birth and marriage records) should be addressed in advance. This is because the applicant’s vital records will be transcribed in the Italian registries and officials will be concerned that key information is correct–name (first, middle if applicable, and last, as well as any suffix such as Junior), birth date, city of birth (yes, city must be listed, not county), and parents’ names.

Beyond the applicant’s own vital records, there are no black and white answers as to what to do, if anything, with name and date discrepancies until you have your appointment. Every case is unique, each consulate and even the individual officers handle discrepancies differently. There have been examples of the same consular handling similar discrepancies different in different cases. While some consulate websites explicitly state that all discrepancies must be addressed prior to your appointment, this is not necessary. (Note that if you are applying in Italy, see our documentation page under the Apply-In-Italy section. If you are applying through the courts, such as for a 1948 case, you need to defer to your lawyer's preference.)

Based on numerous testimonials from applicants and professionals who work through cases with discrepancies, most consulates are quite lenient in this regard. It is a of a lot of work, expense, and frustration amending documents. You may find that the consulate doesn’t need that level of effort. In fact, there have been a few reports of applicants being reprimanded by the consulate for amending ancestors’ vital records.

In a 2018 interview we had with a consulate citizenship officer, we were told that “minor discrepancies are not taken into consideration, as long as we are sure that we are looking at the same person over various documents. Some of the documents must be filed with the Consulates but not sent to Italy for registration. In this case, it might not be necessary to amend the certificates. The biggest problems emerge when the discrepancies are serious, therefore affecting the applicant’s capability to prove his or her case… In any case, when an application cannot proceed due to discrepancies, the officer will indicate to the applicant how the documents need to be amended.”

So, the consulate may find the discrepancies are subtle enough that they don’t care. This is especially the case with phenetic changes so the name is pronounced correctly in English, and Anglicizations (like Giovanni to John). If they do care, resolution may be as simple as showing that there isn’t another person with the alternate spelling from the same town (positivo/negativo letter from the comune, explained further down in this page).

The primary concern of the consulate is to ensure you are correctly representing your family line. If they can reasonably track with your paperwork, minor discrepancies can be overlooked. You may very well cause concerns when amending a vital record, only to have it conflict with how your ancestor represented himself on other non-amendable documents, like the census, naturalization, green card, and war registrations. Sometimes consistency in the inconsistency is better.

It is important to remember that, even though it doesn’t feel like it to you with all the prep you’ve done leading up to it, the appointment is the START of the process in the eyes of the consulates. They do not outright deny cases based on documentation issues if the applicant meets the basic qualifications. The consulate will tell you what concerns they have, if anything, and tell you (and, you can negotiate) what you need to do, if anything, to address the concerns. Follow-up, even for the most “prepared” of cases is very common. They usually allow it through mail/email.

We have collected hundreds of appointment recaps from the members of our Facebook group where discrepancies were noted. The vast majority were accepted without question. In the rare cases where the consulate had a concern, something less than amending the document was accepted as a compromise. If you are a member of our Facebook group, you can find the list here.

How do you deal with discrepancies once you find out you do have to, or if you want to proactively? If you go to your appointment and the officer feels she cannot proceed without having something addressed, be sure to discuss potential remedies and come to an agreement in writing as to what you need to address and how. This is very important so you aren’t left guessing what you need to do and it helps the officer remember what was agreed to, given they deal with hundreds of cases. If you are a member of our Facebook group, you can consult others for their experience and read through appointment recaps. Here are some typical ways to deal with discrepancies on US vital records:

• Naturalization Documents – Note that many foreigners used the US naturalization process as a means of establishing a legal name change. Often on the oath document, completed when the naturalization was formalized, it will state something to the effect of the person known as XYZ is from here forward known as ABC.
• Supporting Documents – These are documents that are not explicitly called-out as being required on the consulate’s website, but may be helpful in connecting name changes across documents and confirming dates and timeframes of events. These extra documents do not need translations or apostilles, as they will not be registered in Italy, rather they will be used by the consulate official to help them in evaluating your case. They don’t necessarily need to be certified copies, though if they come into play in your case, the consulate may ask you to get a certified copy and send it in after your appointment. The following are examples of some supporting documents and how they might be helpful. Bring everything you think might be helpful, but keep these non-required documents separate from the required ones and only present them if they will be helpful at a point of concern during your appointment. Extra documents that the officer is not expecting could take your appointment off track or even derail it.
  • Arrival records (ship manifests) can help establish when a person arrived, who they came with, where they came from, and where they were headed. 
  • Court documents, if found, can establish the legality of name changes. In some cases, our ancestors went through formal processes to change their names.
  • Census records can help establish use of alternative names. For example, if in 1910 Giuseppe La Rocca is listed with his wife and 3 children, then in 1920 he appears as Joseph Rocca, but has the same address, wife, and children listed, it is most definitely the same person and these records help establish the name change. Certified copies can be obtained from National Archives.
  • Baptismal records can be obtained from the diocese chapter over the church where your ancestor was baptized. Sometimes a “baptismal name”–like the of a saint–is given to the child and it will appear on the baptism records. Sometimes children would from that point forward go by the baptismal name or use it as their middle name where they had none at birth. This might help explain the mysterious use of a new first name or addition of a middle name later in life.
• Amendments – This is a process in which the vital records office (state or county) allows amendments to be made under certain circumstances when provided with adequate evidence to support the change. How they go about making the amendment varies from state-to-state and county-to-county. Sometimes they will strike-through the original information on the record and notate the corrected information. Others will create an entirely new record with the changes. Yet others will add an aka (also known as) line for name discrepancies. All of these are acceptable methods if done by the records office such that the amended document can receive an apostille from the Secretary of State’s office.
• Court-Ordered Corrections – Some states/counties do not allow amendments to vital records at all. Sometimes they only allow them from the person the record is for, making it impossible to address a discrepancy for a deceased person. In these cases, you can take your complaint to the courts with your documentation supporting the requested correction and petition the court to order the vital records office to make the change. Your justification is that their refusal to do so has caused you personal harm–you cannot claim your Italian citizenship without the correction. While it is possible to do this yourself, it will require research as to the appropriate court with jurisdiction over the document(s) in question and their procedures for filing. Many employ the use of a lawyer.
• One-and-the-Same Order/Declaratory Judgment (we’ll use OATS for short) – Similar to the above process for court-ordered corrections, a OATS order can be a convenient way of dealing with discrepancies across several documents. Rather than petitioning the court to order corrections, you are asking the judge to certify that they agree that the person listed as x, y, and z with the birthdates of 7, 8, and 9 on such-and-such records is the same person who was born as ABC on date 123. Once certified, you can have the court order translated and obtain an apostille on the order from the Secretary of State, making it legal for use in Italy. See below for a template.
• One-and-the Same Affidavit – This is the same as above, but rather than submitting it to the courts, you have a credible individual draft and sign an affidavit before a notary that states that the person listed as… is the same as the person who was born as… Such affidavits are usually only acceptable as an alternative to amendments if it is from the person who is in question. So, for example, if your grandfather in your line of ascent to the Italian ancestor (or maybe he was the Italian ancestor) was born Pasquale and started using Samuel at some point in his life and never legally made the change, yet Samuel appears on some of the documents you have to submit as part of your case, he can sign an affidavit that he was born Pasquale, began using Samuel, and affirms that he is the person who married so-and-so and together they birthed your parent, the next descendent in your line from the Italian ancestor. To legalize this document for use in Italy, you would send it to the Secretary of State's authentication office in the state in which the notary is registered and obtain an apostille. The OATS should be translated to Italian.
• Self-Declaration - Similar to an OATS, a self-declaration is a simple letter that you or one of your living ascendants writes and signs before a notary to address discrepancies. For example, if your grandmother's given name was Margherita, but she went by Peggy her whole life, she could write a letter attesting this and that the discrepancies seen on her birth versus later documents are because of her use of her preferred name.
• Sworn Agreement of Concordance (Perizia Giurata di Concordanza) - Somewhat like a OATS judgment, this is a type of document that can be presented to a Justice of the Peace in the US or a Notary or tribunale (lower court) in Italy along with the documents in question, describing the discrepancies and asking the person to evaluate and agree that X and Y are the same person whose correct information is Z. The key to this document is that the Justice/Notary state that they take on the legal responsibility for this judgment. This is not something that you need a lawyer for, so it is a much less expensive option than going through the courts for an OATS judgment. This document will need to be written in or translated to Italian. See below to download an example.
• Positivo/Negativo Letter – If you have name and/or birthdate discrepancies on US documents as compared with the birth and/or marriage documents from Italy for this ancestor, you can request a letter from your Italian ancestor’s comune attesting that they are confident that the person you have identified in such-and-such US records is the same as the person born in their city in Italy. (Positivo.) Also, they have found no one else born in that city by the names and birth dates found on the US documents. (Negativo.) While this isn’t always accepted as a substitute to egregious name discrepancies, it can help address discrepancies on documents that cannot be amended, such as US naturalization records.