Documents You Need Notarised When Applying for Dual Citizenship

Most Australians applying for a second citizenship are claiming it by descent: a parent or grandparent was born in Ireland, Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, Poland or elsewhere, and that country passes nationality down the line. The application is really an exercise in proving a family tree to a foreign government, one certificate at a time.

The good news is that much of that proof may not need a notary at all. This page walks through the claim in the order it usually happens.

Step one: confirm eligibility before you order anything

Descent rules belong to the other country, differ enormously, and change — sometimes abruptly, and sometimes in ways that shut out people who were eligible the year before. Generation limits, cut-off dates, and whether a parent had to register your birth in time all vary.

So the first step costs nothing: read the other country's current rules on its official website or consulate page, and get the consulate's document list for your exact situation. Do not order, notarise or apostille a single document until you have that list. People routinely pay for certificates the consulate never wanted.

Australia itself generally permits its citizens to hold another nationality. The other country may not, or may require you to give up Australian citizenship. Check that before you begin.

Step two: map the chain

Write out every link between you and the ancestor who was born abroad: each birth, each marriage, and any death that matters, with the country each event happened in. The documents divide into two groups, and they are handled very differently.

Records from the other country — your grandfather's birth record from a town hall in Sicily, say — are that country's own documents. They are usually obtained there, sometimes by the consulate or a local agent, and an Australian notary has nothing to add to them.

Australian records — the births, marriages and deaths of the generations born here — are the ones that need authenticating before the foreign government will accept them.

Step three: the Australian certificates, often without a notary

Birth, marriage and death certificates issued by a state or territory registry are public documents. In many cases DFAT can apostille the original directly, because it can verify the registrar's signature. Confirm with DFAT that your certificates qualify, but if they do, the chain is: order the full certificate from the registry, send it to DFAT, send it to the consulate. No notary.

Order the full or standard certificate that shows parents' details, not an extract or a commemorative version, and order it fresh. Many consulates want certificates issued recently, whatever the date of the event.

A notary comes in when:

• you cannot part with an original, and the consulate will take a notarised copy instead
• the consulate asks for notarised copies specifically
• you need to make a sworn statement — most often about names

Our page on notarising a citizenship document covers the certified copies in detail; the birth certificate page covers the two routes for registry certificates.

Step four: the naturalisation question

Some countries need to know whether, and when, your ancestor became an Australian citizen, because under their law taking another nationality could end the original one — and whether that happened before or after the next generation was born can decide the whole claim.

That means obtaining your ancestor's Australian naturalisation record, or evidence that there is none. Depending on the era, the record may be held by the Department of Home Affairs or by the National Archives. Ask the consulate precisely what form of record it accepts and how it must be authenticated before you order it, because a search result from an archive and an official certificate are not the same thing.

Step five: the names

This is where descent claims most often stall. Names were anglicised on arrival, spelled phonetically by a clerk, or transliterated from another script. Your great-grandmother may appear under three spellings across four documents.

Consulates deal with this in different ways. Some accept a sworn declaration explaining that the names refer to the same person — that is a notarial act, and it is worth doing at the same appointment as any certified copies. Others require the underlying record to be formally corrected, which a declaration cannot do. Ask which applies before you draft anything.

Step six: translation and lodging

The other country decides whose translation it accepts. Some want their own sworn translators, some accept a translation made in Australia with the translator's credentials, and some want the translation itself apostilled. Ask before commissioning one. Then lodge, usually in person at the consulate that covers your state.

Frequently asked questions

Can a Justice of the Peace certify my documents for the consulate? No. A JP's certification is not recognised by a foreign government and cannot be apostilled.

My parent's certificates are old and fragile. Do I have to send them? No. Order new certificates from the registry. The consulate usually wants a recent issue anyway.

Does the consulate need an apostille if the document is going to its office in Australia? Usually yes. The consulate applies its home country's rules, not Australia's, even when its office is down the road. Whether the other country is an apostille member must be checked against the HCCH status table on the day; if it is not, you need DFAT authentication and then legalisation at that consulate.