1) What is the difference between Certificates and Records ?

The main difference is that records are useful for family history instead certificates are valid for dual citizenship requests. Here you can read more about records and certificates

2) What info do I need to get certificates for Italian Citizenship?

Usually the best way to start a research is completing the form or send us an email with the info you have.
These are the most important info:
– Exact full name of your ancestor
– Exact birth town (or marriage town in case of marriage certificate)
– Exact birth date (or marriage date in case of marriage certificate)
In our experience we understand that in many cases, a starting research couldn’t meet all these 3 requirements.

3) I m not sure of the birth date of my ancestor, how can I proceed?

As maybe you already know, the officers in Municipalities are not required by law to search documents without an exact date.
Usually, if the town is not big and there are not cases of homonyms, even only the exact year could be good to find the record and then issue the certificate.
Anyway a great useful info could be the names of the parents (or even one parent) of your ancestor.

If the birthdate is wrong, it’s very likely that your request would be “negative” (the town hall will reply that there is NO evidence of the birth in that town and it’s not possible to prepare the certificate).

To avoid this, in case you are not sure of the exact birth date, we suggest to ask to our local researcher to conduct a preliminary research in the local archives to find your ancestors’ record.
In this way our expert will search the record in a big range of years so you will avoid to miss the possibility to get your certificate for a wrong birthdate!

4) I m not sure of the birth town of my ancestor, how can I proceed?

In Italy every single town or village has its registers.
This means that to get the certificate you must address your request to the correct town where your ancestor was born otherwise you would get a negative reply from the town hall.

If you are not sure of the birth town our experts could make a preliminary research to find the exact town where to request the certificate.
This is a quite common situation and our genealogists were able to solve many “puzzling cases” to request started with an approximate “area of origin” or only with an Italian region.
With some luck and lot of experience we were able to find the exact village even starting without any clue about the birthtown (with requests only with “Italy” as birthplace!

5) I know that in the village where my ancestor was born, civil records are not available, how can I proceed?

Where there are no civil records, for example if your ancestor was born before the establishment of the civil status, that, for historical reasons, differs between the several areas of the Italian territory, or because for some reason the civil records were lost (e.g. for flooding or fire or bombing during WWII) , you must address your request to the specific Parish in which he got the baptism or the marriage, since each municipal territory can have more than one Parish.
If you don’t know the exact parish, our local expert could make a preliminary research to find the exact religious archive where the record is stored.

6) How much it will cost ?

As explained before, the researches could be very different so the costs could be very different too.
That’s why, to give a cost estimate, our researchers ask for the starting info (name, place, date)
For example with an exact date, the research will be easier so it will be cheaper.
At the same time, to search in a small village could be easier that to search in a big town!
Then the local researcher knows exactly the situation of the specific archive so he knows how easy or difficult is to get documents there.
Our suggestion is to stay away from people who try to sell at the same price services that could be very, very different (unless you feel comfortable with “empty” results!)

7) How much time it will take?

Before to start, our local expert will give you an estimate of the needed time to complete the activities.
As you can imagine everythings depends on the availability of the documents and the good will of the officers involved! Dealing with Public Administration could be very unpredictable but usually our researcher are able to respect the time schedule. Of course delays could happen but please remember it can’t be our researcher’s fault. Please remember that you will pay the balance at the end of the research so the researchers have no reason to delay the activities!

8) What happens if the research is negative?

Our researcher will work using the starting info you give us.
In case they are wrong, the officers of the town hall will not be able to find the record (for example because the date was wrong or the town you indicated was wrong) so they will not issue the certificate, but they will give a reply of a “negative” (empty) research.
In these cases you will be requested to pay in full the research as the negative reply can’t be considered our researcher’s fault.

9) How I will pay you?

To start the activities we would ask you to pay a deposit (usually 50% of the total fee).
You can pay by Paypal, credit card or wire transfer.
At the end of the activities we will ask for the balance
As soon as we will receive the payment we will send you a digital copy of the certificate (or of the reply of the town hall in case of negative result).
Then we will ask you to confirm the address where you want we ship the document and we will send you the paper certificate by registered mail.
Please remember you are NOT buying documents (nobody can sell certificates issued by a Public Administration!) but you are hiring a professional researcher to request the needed documents to the town hall and to manage all the activities with the officers on your behalf .