Reacquiring Italian Citizenship

[Benjamin71]

I am enquiring on behalf of my wife regarding the reacquision of Italian citizenship of her father.

Her father came to Australia during the 1950's, and like most young Italians, lost their Italian citizenship when their parents became Australian.

From my research, the laws governing Italian citizenship changed in August 1992 allowing dual citizenship. This means that if he lived in Italy for 12 months he was entitled to regain his Italian citizenship.

This leads me to my question, if he reacquired Italian citizenship before my wife's 18th birthday, would she be considered an Italian as well?

Thanks and regards,
Benjamin.

[mler]

Citizenship is only reclaimed if it is requested. If your father-in-law simply resided in Italy for a year w/o informing Italy that it was with the intent of reclaiming citizenship, his citizenship would not have been reinstated.

By the same token, he would have had to specifically request citizenship for his minor child. If he did not so so, it didn't happen.

[Benjamin71]

Thanks for your reply. We're fairly sure he did all that, so the purpose of my post was to verify that if he re-claimed his citizenship before my wife turned 18 years of age and he also registered her, that she should now have Italian citizenship.

[mler]

Yes, if he did reestablish citizenship for himself and registered his daughter as well, she should be a citizen. Why not contact the commune to verify this.

[Benjamin71]

Yes. Will do. My father-in-law is a shocking procrastinator which is a big problem. We'd contact them ourselves but our Italian is up to scratch.

Cheers!