We assess your family history and identify your strongest path to Italian citizenship.
We locate and obtain all required vital records from U.S. and Italian archives.
We organize your complete packet with translations, apostilles, and legal verification.
We guide your submission and provide ongoing support until recognition.
Our detailed invoices break down every service so you always know exactly what you’re paying for. No surprises, no hidden costs—just clear, honest pricing from start to finish.
From the first eligibility check to the final court ruling, we handle every step. You get a single point of contact and a team that manages documents, translations, apostilles, and legal filings on your behalf.
By filing directly with the Italian Court instead of going through a consulate, we bypass long waiting lists and significantly reduce processing times—often completing cases in 18 to 24 months.
Our team operates across both the U.S. and Italy, combining local knowledge with legal expertise. We communicate in English and Italian, ensuring nothing gets lost in translation.
In the U.S., our Discovery and Document Collection teams, along with dedicated client advisors, work directly with you to build your case. In Italy, our in-house legal team, executive leadership, and local agents manage the legal and judicial process.
This transatlantic structure allows us to offer extended availability, clear communication, and end-to-end support.
If your needs go beyond what’s listed on our website, we’ll create a custom solution tailored specifically to you.
Italian citizenship by descent (jure sanguinis) is based on a simple principle: if you have an Italian ancestor, citizenship may have been passed down through your family line — even if your family has lived abroad for generations.
What matters is a legal chain of citizenship that stayed intact from your Italian-born ancestor to you. The most important factor is the Naturalization timing: Did your Italian ancestor become a citizen of another country before the next person in the line was born?
To qualify for Italian citizenship, most applicants prove that they have an Italian-born ancestor and that citizenship was legally passed down through each generation without being interrupted.
In most cases, the deciding factor is naturalization: if your Italian ancestor became a citizen of another country before the next generation was born, eligibility may be affected; if they naturalized after, the citizenship line often remains intact. Some cases also require a specific legal pathway (for example, certain maternal-line situations), so getting the strategy right early is important.
At PortaleItaly, we verify eligibility first when anything is unclear, then we build and organize the full case file so the process is straightforward and properly supported.
Most cases require civil records for each person in the citizenship line — typically birth, marriage, and (if applicable) divorce and death certificates — plus proof of your Italian ancestor’s naturalization status (or lack of it). The exact list depends on your family structure and where events occurred. At PortaleItaly, we don’t give you a generic checklist: we build a custom document roadmap, then we collect or review the records, verify consistency across documents, and coordinate any needed corrections so everything is properly prepared for submission.
If you already have all required documents collected and ready, the court process typically takes about 12–18 months. If documents still need to be obtained, that usually adds another 4–6 months, depending on where the records are located and whether any corrections are needed.
During the Document Collection Phase, our team identifies exactly what you need for your specific family line, requests records from the appropriate agencies and municipalities, reviews everything for consistency (names, dates, places), flags issues early, and guides the corrections and supporting documentation needed so your file is complete and court-ready before submission.
PortaleItaly handles citizenship cases exclusively through the Italian court, not through consulates. We do this because the court route is often more structured and reliable for applicants, especially when consulate appointments are heavily backlogged. It also allows us to present your case as a complete, professionally prepared legal file, rather than depending on appointment availability and local consulate procedures.
From the start, we build everything around a court-standard submission: we confirm the correct legal pathway, collect and review records, address discrepancies, and prepare a clean, consistent file so the case can move forward efficiently once filed.