Death abroad and change of name under Italian law

Two events which Italian law treats with a strictness unfamiliar to a British family are the death of a citizen abroad, which must be recorded in the registers of the comune before any succession, pension or cancellation from the AIRE can follow, and the change of a name, which in Italy is never a private act and never follows automatically from a marriage, a deed poll or a choice made at a foreign registry. This page sets out both, as the consulates in the United Kingdom handle them.

The transcription of a death

The death of an Italian citizen which occurs abroad is transcribed in the civil status register of the comune of origin or of last residence, and the transcription is requested by anyone with an interest in it, through the consulate or, under article 12 of the regulation on civil status, directly from the comune. In London the procedure is entirely postal. The family sends to the registry office of the Consulate General, by Special Delivery, the consular form, the certified copy of the entry of death issued by the British register office, the paper apostille of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on the signature of the registrar, an Italian translation of the certificate alone and not of the apostille, a copy of the identity document of the deceased and a prepaid envelope for the reply. The consulate examines the files in order of receipt, in about three weeks, keeps the documents in its archive, transmits the act to the comune by certified email and informs the applicant, who then sees the record appear in the national population register. No fee is charged, because the consular tariff exempts the acts of civil status destined for transcription.

The apostille must be the one on the registrar’s signature: an apostille obtained on the signature of a notary or a solicitor is refused, as is an electronic apostille. Where the death of a citizen registered in the London AIRE occurred in a third country, the certificate of that country is produced with its own apostille and with a translation apostilled there or sworn before an Italian court. Where the deceased was a foreign citizen married to, or in civil partnership with, an Italian registered in the AIRE, the death is transcribed in the comune of the Italian spouse, without apostille, because the record serves to update the Italian spouse’s own status.

The transcription is the condition of everything which follows. The comune cancels the deceased from the AIRE only on the strength of it. The heirs who accept or renounce an inheritance before the consulate produce the Italian death certificate, that is the transcribed act, and not the British one. A surviving spouse who claims an Italian survivor’s pension, or who wishes to remarry, needs the Italian record before the foreign one is of any use.

Remains and ashes

The return of a body or of ashes to Italy for burial passes through the social office of the consulate, which issues the mortuary passport, the consular certificate which accompanies the coffin or the urn. In London the family, or the funeral director instructed in England, writes to the office with the death certificate or the coroner’s certificate, apostilled where the deceased was Italian, the certificate of embalming, the certificate that the death occurred free of infectious disease, the coroner’s certificate for removal out of England, the identity document of the deceased and the declaration of the funeral director. The coffin follows the rules of the Berlin convention of 1937, to which the United Kingdom is not a party, so that the consulate first obtains the authorisation of the comune of destination: an embalmed body in a soldered casket of zinc or lead inside a wooden coffin of the prescribed thickness, with recesses for the seals. For ashes the file contains the certificate of cremation and the details of the cemetery, or, where the urn is to be kept at home, the name, the address and the relationship of the person who keeps it, with the prior permission of the comune. Once the comune has authorised the entry, an appointment is fixed at which the seals are affixed, the certificate is issued and the consular fee, fifty euro, is paid.

A name under Italian law

Under the Italian rules of private international law the name is governed by the national law of the person, and under Italian law a citizen bears one name for the whole of life: the name recorded at birth. A marriage does not change it. An Italian woman who marries keeps her surname, and the consulate can at most annotate the husband’s surname on a page of her passport, once the marriage has been transcribed in Italy. A deed poll executed in England has no effect on the Italian record, and neither has the surname chosen for a child at a British register office which departs from the Italian rule. The consequence, familiar to every family which lives between the two countries, is that a person is known by one name in the British documents and by another in the Italian ones, and that the Italian passport, the identity card and the codice fiscale carry the Italian name, whatever the British passport says.

A change of name or surname under Italian law is an administrative procedure before the Prefecture of the province of the comune of registration, under article 89 of the regulation on civil status as amended in 2012, and the consulate acts only as the intermediary. The citizen, an adult registered in the AIRE whose birth is recorded in Italy, lodges an application written in Italian which sets out reasons of objective weight, documented, since the change is granted as an exception and never for a historic or illustrious surname. In London the application is uploaded through Prenot@mi and handed in at an appointment, with the proof of payment of the stamp duty, a copy of the passport, the British police certificate for immigration purposes listing all the previous names, apostilled and translated, and, where they exist, the deed poll with its apostille and a certified translation and the consent of the spouse, the parents or the siblings. The Prefecture publishes a summary of the application for thirty days, during which any interested person may object, and decides by decree, after a period which the consulate itself describes as several months to one or two years. The decree is then annotated on the birth record at the request of the citizen, and only after the annotation does the consulate issue the new passport, the new identity card and the new codice fiscale.

A material error in the Italian record, a letter wrong in a name or a date mistranscribed, is corrected by the civil status officer of the comune under article 98 of the regulation, without any application to the Prefecture, on production of the document which proves the error. A judicial change of name made abroad, as distinct from an administrative one, may be recognised directly under the rules on foreign judgments. The circular of the Ministry of the Interior of 2012 draws exactly this line, and a deed poll, which is not a judgment, falls on the administrative side of it.

The surname of children

Since the judgment of the Constitutional Court of 2022 a child born to Italian parents takes the surnames of both, in the order the parents agree, unless they agree to give the surname of one of them alone. A child born in the United Kingdom to an Italian parent is registered in Italy with the surname which the British certificate shows, and where the certificate shows both parents’ surnames a person born abroad may later ask the comune, under article 98, to reinstate the original surname of the Italian line in the Italian record. A minor’s surname follows a change of the parent’s, and an adult child may elect to keep the previous one within a year.

The British side

The British authorities, for their part, know no single name for life. A surname is changed by use, a deed poll is optional, a spouse may keep, take or combine surnames, and the British certificates of birth and marriage are never altered afterwards. The guidance of the British government for its citizens in Italy acknowledges the difficulty and suggests the remedies which work in practice: reverting the British passport to the name of birth, legalising a deed poll and having it translated, obtaining the police certificate which lists the other names, and, where passports have been issued in different names, the certificate of the passport office which discloses them. On the Italian side the consulate issues, by post, a certificate of identity confirmation which states that the person named in the Italian documents and the person named in the British ones are the same, provided that the marriage from which the difference arises has already been transcribed in Italy.

If a death in the family has not been recorded in Italy, or if your documents carry two names and an office has noticed, send us the certificates you hold and the comune of registration. We prepare the file for the transcription, or the application and its documents for the Prefecture, and follow it to the annotation.