Ciao a tutti! I have two updates to share about our Italian citizenship project - though I should note upfront that neither is particularly encouraging. Update on Ancestral Property in Ceprano Regarding the property search Dad and I initiated in Ceprano: We've received the final report about our ancestor Lupi Arduino's building on Via ...

Ciao a tutti! I am excited to share that I shipped our POAs, Johana’s documents, and a few other pieces of paperwork off to Italy! The DHL tracking number is 1094858111. The package is scheduled to arrive on Thursday 10/24. When they received the bulk of our documents from our former lawyer, they looked at everything the same day, so I...

Ciao a tutti, We are well on our way to filing our new case! We are waiting on a few passports and one codice fiscale, but we are all set with POAs and vital records documents! Our lawyers are satisfied with all of them, so once we have a few apostilles and those passports, we will be ready to mail the remaining documents to Italy and ...

Ciao a Tutti, We finally got our Powers of Attorney (POA) from our lawyer, along with instructions for requesting Italian fiscal codes (AKA codici fiscali) from our consulate. Please read this email carefully and let me know if you have any questions about anything. POAs I have a POA for each of you to print and sign before a notary. I...

Ciao a Tutti, A few quick updates for us this week: * documents have been delivered successfully * POAs will take a few more weeks First, our documents were promptly shipped by our old attorney and have been delivered intact to our new law firm's office. They confirmed that everything was in order, save for one document. This was a doc...

Ciao a Tutti, Just a few quick updates for you on this fine Friday! First, we heard back from our new law firm and they are happy with the scanned copies of our documents. They want to request one additional document from Ceprano on our behalf at no additional cost to us. Nice! With this step complete, I reached out to our former attor...

Hi All, Quick Summary: 1. New law firm seems great 2. Our case, once filed, will probably have a hearing quickly 3. Please send me the first payment of $215 if you haven't already 4. Look our for another message for signing a POA and requesting a codice fiscale I just got off a call with Andrea from the new law firm. I am filled with s...

Hi All, I'm writing to let you know about a few things. Here are the key points, but keep reading for more details - - - - - - - - - - Key Points: 1. Johana has joined the case 2. Ooma has withdrawn from the process 3. New lawyer's paperwork is ready for Noah to sign 4. First payment of €2000 (€200 per person) is due soon (next week, r...

Hi All, I got a couple of questions, one more than once, so I wanted to clarify and add some additional info. If we work with Avv. Ubaldini, we’d be paying €9500 for the 10 of us, splitting it equally. €950 (the portion each person would pay) is about $1020 today. This fee would be paid over time. The first payment would be €2000 total...

Hi everyone, I've been reaching out to several Italian citizenship lawyers over the past couple of months to get their perspective on our case. I’ve included a response below from one such lawyer, Andrea Ubaldini. He believes we have a strong case through our great-great-grandmother, Filomena D'Amico, and that we have all the necessary...

Ciao a Tutti, (The content of this message covers a lot of the same ground as what I shared at dinner last night, just in more depth. Feel free to skim or skip.) I saw many of you last night and got your signatures on the paperwork to withdraw our case from Rome. It makes me sad, but many of you have remarked about how valuable this pr...

Ciao a Tutti, I just spoke with our lawyer. He advised us request to withdraw our case. There are two main reasons why. First, we will avoid having to pay the court fees. They can be from €1,000 to €4,000. (He did indicate that it is unlikely that we will have to pay this fine while we live abroad, for what it is worth.) In Italy's jud...

Hi All, I got the message below from our lawyer this morning. He and I will be speaking tomorrow morning to talk this over. I would appreciate hearing from you -- any questions, comments, concerns, or considerations. I'll bring those to him and share what I find out. I don't want to make decisions without your input. Ci Vediamo Presto,...

Hi All, I kept my previous message brief in an effort to keep things simple. I wanted to write a more in-depth message explaining the issue with the ruling and sharing exactly what our lawyer said to us. If you aren't that interested, this is a message that you can skip. I also wanted to share the response that another person whose cas...

Hello Everyone, I'm writing today with some news that I find fairly discouraging, and I think you will too. It would be easy to get deep into the weeds, so I will aim to give a brief but accurate description of what has happened, but I encourage you to write with any questions you have. In June, a case was heard before a portion of the...

Hi all, In my last message, I said that we would hopefully get a verdict soon. We got an update today, but it was not a verdict. We will be having a second hearing in our case. It has been scheduled for June 26, 2024 — 350 days from today. I think that this feels especially rough since I was expecting a verdict not a huge wait. It soun...

Hi All, Quick update! I just heard back from our lawyer. He says that the three-judge panel for our case already met on July 5, and we are just waiting on the decision to be published. This is much better than what I thought, that we were waiting on a new hearing with this panel of judges. I don't have a timeline on when the decision w...

Hello All, Our hearing was on Wednesday. I’m sure you’ve been curious to know what happened, so here is your update! The judge in our case, Nicola Saracino, chose not to make a ruling and to refer our case to a panel of three judges who will decide the outcome of our case. It is not clear to me if this was always what was going to happ...

Hi All, We are exactly a month out from our hearing date of July 5! I am counting the days, and I am very excited. I am sure that you are too. (My immediate family will be in Milan on the day of our hearing in Rome. We think it will be fun to celebrate in Italy, as Italian citizens!) The other detail that’s important (and that snuck up...

Ciao a Tutti! We have an official court date! It’s July 5 at 10:30 AM in Rome. By coincidence, our immediate family (my parents, siblings, their significant others, Josie, Ben, and I) will be in Italy on this date! I’m checking with our lawyer to see if there’s any point in my/our attending the hearing. It’s exciting to have a date on ...

Hi Everyone, Another quick one today! First, we have been assigned a judge! His name is Nicola Saracino. I have been able to find out very little about him. Someone else on the Facebook group did win his appeal when Judge Saracino was the judge. Second, we have a “data citazione” for our case, which is a tentative hearing date. It is p...

Hi Everyone, Quick update to let you know that our appeal has been filed! Our case number is 1558/2023. If you want to play along at home, you can download the “Giustizia Civile” app from your app store of choice, and follow this quick video guide to follow our case! https://youtu.be/bH5TNPx-JvY I’ll also be providing updates by email,...

Ciao a Tutti, A few updates today, as we are a week from our appeal filing deadline. Here are the main points: 1. Translations completed… mostly! 2. Waiting on last POA 3. Should be filing soon 4. Update on Appeal Rules (This part is confusing.) - - - - - - - - - - 1. Our translator completed the translations of the POAs and attested t...

Buongiorno, I probably should have just waited 12 hours to send my last message, but here we are! Judge Pezone made the disappointing decision to reject our case today. I would like to appeal, but I am waiting to hear from our lawyer about the legal reasoning to know for sure that an appeal would likely be successful. If we were reject...

Hi All, Quick update! Our hearing appears to have happened, but no word on a verdict. It does sound like the Ministry of the Interior (the other party in our suit; essentially the specific part of the government we are “suing”) did show up. According to another member of the Facebook group, they do this to ask for us to pay for their f...

Hi Family, Our court case is coming up next month on February 20th. That's about 7 weeks/48 days away. Judge Adele Pezone will be reviewing our documents on our court date, alongside Avv. Di Rugiero's legal reasoning arguing for our citizenship, and potentially (but probably not) alongside a set of documents from the Italian Ministry o...

Buongiorno, Great news! We have a court date! Judge Adele Pezone will make a judgement in our case on February 20, 2023. (That’s 20/2/2023, if your using the Italian date format.) This is actually WAY sooner than I thought we might get. I had intially estimated October of 2023 for a hearing date on the Citizenship Timeline. I’ll work o...

Ciao Gente di Festa, (That's "hi party people" in Italian -- tuck that useful phrase away for a rainy day!) I'm back with a request and an "update" in this edition. First, it's time for us to make our final payment to our lawyer in Italy! This is our last major expense before the ruling and the second-to-last shared expense overall. I ...

Ciao a Tutti, Big news today! In this week's newsletter... 1. Judge Assigned and Waiting for Court Date 2. App to Track Court Case 3. About Our Judge 4. Appeals? 5. Next Steps/Future Emails - - - - - - - - - - 1. This morning, our lawyer let us know that we have been assigned a case number and a judge. Our case number is 16588-2022. Ou...

Ciao a Tutti, I’m excited to share that our Italian court case has been filed! We should get our case number in a few weeks. (It strikes me as very Italian that this isn’t an automated process. Viva Italia!) You’ll hear from me as soon as we have a case number (within reason because, you know, there’s going to be a baby around here soo...