Documents You Need Notarised When Applying for Dual Citizenship

For a citizenship-by-descent claim, you often need fewer notarised documents than you expect. Australian birth, marriage and death certificates can usually go to DFAT as originals for an apostille, with no notary. A notary is needed mainly for certified copies you cannot part with, and for sworn declarations explaining name differences across the family's records.

Key takeaways

• Most Australians applying for a second citizenship are claiming it by descent, which means proving a family tree to a foreign government one certificate at a time.
• Get the consulate's document list for your exact situation before you order, notarise or apostille anything. Descent rules change.
• Records from the other country are obtained there. An Australian notary has nothing to add to them.
• Australian registry certificates can usually be apostilled by DFAT as originals, without a notary.
• Names are where claims most often stall. A declaration before a notary sometimes solves it; sometimes only a corrected record will.

Confirm eligibility before you order anything

Descent rules belong to the other country. They differ enormously and they change, sometimes abruptly, and sometimes in ways that shut out people who were eligible the year before. Generation limits, cut-off dates, whether a parent had to register your birth by a certain age, and whether an ancestor kept their nationality after emigrating all vary from country to country.

So the first step costs nothing. Read the other country's current rules on its official website or its consulate's page, and get the consulate's document list for your exact situation, in writing if possible. Do not order, notarise or apostille a single document until you have that list. People routinely pay for certificates the consulate never wanted, or apostille documents in a form it will not accept.

Australia generally permits its citizens to hold another nationality. The other country may not, or may require you to give up Australian citizenship when you acquire its own. Check that before you begin, because it can change the whole decision. If you are also planning which passport to travel on afterwards, that is a separate question for the Australian Passport Office and the other country.

Map the chain

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

Records from the other country, such as a grandfather's birth record from a town hall in Sicily or a parish register in Ireland, are that country's own documents. They are usually obtained there, sometimes through the consulate or a local agent, and an Australian notary has nothing to add. An Australian notary can certify that a copy matches the original they sighted, but cannot vouch for a foreign registry, and the foreign government trusts its own records more than any certification of them.

Australian records, the births, marriages and deaths of the generations born or married here, are the ones that must be authenticated before the foreign government will accept them. This is where DFAT, and sometimes a notary, come in.

The Australian certificates, often without a notary

Birth, marriage and death certificates issued by a state or territory registry are Australian public documents. DFAT's page on the documents it can legalise lists them among the originals it accepts. In those cases, DFAT confirms the registrar's signature directly, and the route is: order the certificate from the registry, send the original to DFAT, send it to the consulate. No notary.

An apostille is the certificate DFAT issues for countries in the Hague Apostille Convention, confirming the signature and seal on the document, never its contents. For countries outside the Convention, DFAT issues an authentication certificate and the consulate then legalises it. The consulate applies its own country's rules even though its office is in Australia, so a document going to a consulate a few streets away still needs whatever that country requires. Check the country on the HCCH status table on the day.

Order the full or standard certificate that shows parents' details, not a short extract, and ask the consulate before using a commemorative version. Order it fresh. Many consulates want certificates issued recently, whatever the date of the event. DFAT will not accept a laminated or altered certificate, which rules out many family originals kept in albums.

A notary comes in when:

• you cannot part with an original, and the consulate accepts a notarised copy instead;
• the consulate asks specifically for notarised copies;
• you need to make a sworn statement or declaration, most often about names, or about an ancestor's residence;
• a document is a private document, such as a letter or declaration from a relative, which DFAT will act on only once a notary has notarised it.

Notarising a citizenship document covers certified copies in detail, and document notarisation sets out what a notary can do.

Preparing the Australian documents, step by step

1. List every Australian event in the chain, with the state or territory where it was registered, because each registry issues only its own certificates.
2. Check who may order each certificate. Registries limit access to some records, particularly recent ones for other people, so a relative may need to order theirs, or give written consent.
3. Order fresh, full certificates close to the date you will lodge, if the consulate has a recency rule.
4. Decide original or notarised copy for each one, using the consulate's list.
5. Prepare any declaration about names in the consulate's wording and sign it before a notary.
6. Lodge everything with DFAT together, so the whole set comes back at once for translation and lodging.

The naturalisation question

Some countries need to know whether, and when, your ancestor became an Australian citizen. Under their law, taking another nationality could have ended 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 or citizenship 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 of Australia. Ask the consulate precisely what form of record it accepts and how it must be authenticated before you order it, because a copy of an archive file and an official certificate are not the same thing. DFAT lists Australian citizenship certificates among the originals it can legalise; for an archive copy, ask DFAT how it can be dealt with.

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. A great-grandmother may appear under three spellings across four documents, with a different date of birth on one of them.

Consulates deal with this in different ways. Some accept a sworn declaration by a family member explaining that the names refer to the same person, supported by whatever documents show the link. 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 by the registry that holds it, which no declaration can do. Ask which applies before you draft anything, and ask whether the consulate has its own form of declaration.

Translation and lodging

The other country decides whose translation it accepts. Some want their own sworn or official translators, some accept a translation made in Australia with the translator's credentials, and some want the translation itself apostilled. For DFAT to legalise a translation made here, it must be by a NAATI certified or recognised translator, with the translator's details and seal on every page. Ask the consulate before commissioning one; see NAATI translation with a notary.

Then lodge, usually with the consulate that covers your state or territory, in the way it asks. Some consulates take applications by appointment only, and some pass them to an office in the home country.

Document	Where it comes from	Usual route
Ancestor's foreign birth or marriage record	The other country	Obtained there, often via the consulate
Australian birth, marriage or death certificate	State or territory registry	Original to DFAT, then consulate
Notarised copy of a certificate	A notary, from the original	Notary, then DFAT
Naturalisation or citizenship record	Home Affairs or the National Archives	As the consulate specifies
Declaration about names	A family member, before a notary	Notary, then DFAT

Here is an illustration, not a real case

A woman in Adelaide applies for citizenship through her grandfather, who was born in a European country and emigrated after the war. The consulate's list asks for his birth record, which it helps her request from his home town, and for her father's and her own Australian birth certificates and her parents' marriage certificate, all apostilled and recently issued. She orders fresh full certificates from the registries and sends the originals to DFAT; no notary is involved. Her grandfather's surname was anglicised on arrival, so the consulate asks for a declaration from her father linking the two spellings. He signs it before a notary, with his father's naturalisation file copy attached, and DFAT apostilles the notary's certificate.

In short

Start with the consulate's list, not with a notary. Foreign records come from the other country. Australian registry certificates can usually go straight to DFAT as fresh originals. A notary is needed for copies you cannot replace, for private documents and for declarations about names or naturalisation. For particular countries, see Italian citizenship by descent and the Irish Foreign Births Register.

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Working through a consulate's list for a descent claim? Send us the list you were given, and we will explain each step before you book.