Brescia Court Recognizes Citizenship of Adopted Brazilian

A ruling published on August 21 by the Court of Appeal of Brescia recognized the Italian citizenship of a Brazilian man adopted five days after his birth in 1990. The decision overturned a first-instance ruling that had denied the request in April 2025, and offers an important interpretation of citizenship transmission when the Italian ancestor never formalized their own recognition during their lifetime.

What the Brescia Court Decided

According to Insieme, the Court of Appeal of Brescia found that the applicant's ancestor was an Italian citizen from birth, even without having formally requested recognition of his citizenship while alive. In the judges' view, Italian citizenship is a right acquired by birth (iure sanguinis) and does not depend on a prior administrative act by the ancestor to exist — formal recognition is merely proof of a status that already belongs to the person.

With this interpretation, the Court overturned the first-instance ruling, which had rejected the recognition request in April 2025 on the grounds that the absence of prior recognition would interrupt the chain of transmission. The case stands out among those covered in News from Italy for addressing a sensitive point: what happens when the Italian ancestor in the family line died without ever having sought their citizenship documents.

The Case and Its Three Points of Dispute

According to Insieme, the applicant's adoptive mother descended from an Italian man born in Ceggia, in the Veneto region, who emigrated to Brazil and never became a naturalized Brazilian citizen — but also never formally requested his Italian citizenship before he died. This was the first point of dispute: without Brazilian naturalization, there was no loss of Italian citizenship by the ancestor, but there was also no formal recognition during his lifetime to "prove" the status for his descendants.

The second point centered on the adoption itself. The applicant was adopted while still a minor, and the Court equated his situation to that of a biological child based on Article 5 of Law 123/1983, which addresses the equal treatment of adopted children and natural children for purposes of citizenship transmission, provided the adoption occurred while the adoptee was a minor.

The third point involved the validity of the adoption itself, formalized through a public deed in 1990. The Brescia Court considered that the process had undergone review by Brazilian courts at the time, which dispelled doubts about any potential violation of international public policy — a requirement frequently examined by Italian courts when assessing foreign legal acts related to parentage.

The Brescia Court found that the lack of prior formal recognition by an ancestor is not, by itself, grounds to deny citizenship transmission to their descendants.

Why This Matters for Descendants of Italians in Brazil

The Brescia precedent reinforces an important principle for those researching their lineage within the realm of Italian Citizenship: the absence of prior administrative recognition by an ancestor — whether because they never sought their documents or because they died before doing so — does not automatically interrupt the chain of citizenship transmission, as long as it is proven that they never became a naturalized citizen of another country.

This topic is especially relevant given that Italian legislation on recognition by descent underwent significant changes in 2025, with the Tajani Decree (DL 36/2025, converted into Law 74/2025), which restricted the consular and administrative pathway to children and grandchildren of Italians, leaving great-grandchildren and later generations dependent on the judicial route. Cases like Brescia's, although addressing a specific issue — adoption and delayed recognition — help illustrate how Italian courts continue to interpret lineage questions even amid a more restrictive landscape.

The case also draws attention to the particular situation of adopted children seeking Italian citizenship, a less-discussed topic that follows the specific rules of Law 123/1983 regarding equal treatment with biological children when the adoption occurs during minority.

For those at the beginning of their genealogical research, the phase of searching for records in Italy is often decisive in identifying situations exactly like the one in Ceggia — when the ancestor never formalized their recognition during their lifetime. Those following topics related to Life in Italy will also find in this type of ruling a portrait of how Italian courts handle immigration stories spanning generations.

The case decided by Brescia reinforces that, even amid a more restrictive legislative landscape, court rulings continue to examine the particularities of each family lineage — making careful documentation research all the more important before filing any recognition request.

Want to know if you're entitled to Italian citizenship? Talk to a specialized Italian citizenship advisory service.

Source: Insieme