https://lineholds.com/Whether your grandparent's line reaches you under Ireland's, Canada's, Germany's, Italy's or Poland's rule, where it breaks, and the order that proves it. Dated, sourced, never paid by the application.Hugoenhttps://lineholds.com/posts/the-grandmothers-line/Fri, 25 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/the-grandmothers-line/<p>If your line runs through a grandmother rather than a grandfather, three countries may have stopped it on a date rather than on a fact — Italy at 1 January 1948, Germany at 1 January 1975, Britain at 1 January 1983. Two of those three have a route that repairs the break today. The Italian one does not; it has a court.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/parent-naturalised-before-your-birth/Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/parent-naturalised-before-your-birth/<p>If your parent naturalised as an American before you were born, your German, Italian, Polish and — if the birth was before 1977 — Canadian lines are very likely already over. Not weakened, not harder to prove. Over, in the year your parent signed the petition, and for everyone born after that date.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/where-the-line-breaks/Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/where-the-line-breaks/<p>You cannot lose a citizenship you never had, and that is the whole difficulty. In a descent claim the loss that matters happened to somebody else, on a date, usually decades before you were born — and it ended the line for everyone below them.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/dual-citizenship-with-the-united-states/Fri, 18 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/dual-citizenship-with-the-united-states/<p>All six of them. Ireland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom each allow a person to hold their citizenship alongside American citizenship, and none of them asks you to give up the US passport as a condition of a descent claim.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/two-lines-three-passports/Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/two-lines-three-passports/<p>There is no number. No treaty or authority anywhere sets a limit on how many citizenships you can have, so the question is never &ldquo;how many&rdquo; — it is six separate questions, one per country, each about that country&rsquo;s own rule for its own citizenship.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/what-each-country-calls-the-grant/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/what-each-country-calls-the-grant/<p>Five countries, five different words for the thing at the end of a descent claim, and the word is not decoration: it tells you whether the document creates your citizenship or merely records it, which authority issues it, and whether your children are affected by the date on it.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/do-you-need-a-lawyer/Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/do-you-need-a-lawyer/<p>Most citizenship by descent claims do not need a lawyer. They need three or four civil documents and a form that the register takes directly from the applicant, and in four of the five countries this site covers that is the ordinary route rather than the shortcut.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/already-a-citizen-without-applying/Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/already-a-citizen-without-applying/<p>In four of the five countries this site covers, a qualifying line makes you a citizen at birth. There is no application that turns you into one, because you already are one, and the filing everybody calls an application is a request for proof of something that happened on the day you were born.</p>https://lineholds.com/posts/grandparent-rule-six-countries/Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0500https://lineholds.com/posts/grandparent-rule-six-countries/<p>Four of these six countries can pass citizenship to you through a grandparent. Two usually cannot, and one of those two — the United Kingdom — is the single most common place a reader of this site is told yes by someone who is paid to say it.</p>