well, TW bureaucracy seems to pale wrt Italian one.
Going to marry soon, will go to HRO sometime around May-June, so I have to get the certificate of single status from the Italian “embassy” in order to proceed with the registration. This certificate in Italy can be substituted by an affidavit/self-declaration, but here need something more “official”.
So I contacted the IETCPO for this and after 2 months and exactly 2 weeks after I was in Hong Kong they told me I need to submit a HK certificate of no marriage to the Italian consulate there in order to clear the issuance of the certificate here in Taipei.
Basically Italy says that for EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY you have been living in, you need to provide a certificate of single status for each of them… This has been confirmed to me by the Registrar officer at the HK consulate…
I’m lucky enough that the only “country” I was living in before is close to here and a relatively simple one for bureaucracy, but Jesus Christ, that’s a big enough hurdle to prevent anyone more globetrotting to ever marry.
or, technically, not to report your change of residency to the Italian authorities. If you don’t report, they cannot know, but this will bring further issues like difficulties in request documents/getting consular assistance and potentially being requested by the Italian Government to pay taxes on your global income.
If you are registered as a resident abroad, the tax man won’t come to look for you, otherwise, if you are still registered as resident in the country, then by law the government can tax you for your global income. There are some exemption if the country of income has a DTA with Italy, but you most likely still need to pay a difference to the tax agency.
faster and almost cheaper to fly there. one day affair for the most difficult part, that is collecting the certificate from the marriage registry and submit that to the High court for the apostille.
The collection of the apostilled document and submission to the consulate will be done by my friend there via a simple authorisation, whereas the collection at the registry would require a notarised POA from here with an authenticated copy of my passport… a worse nightmare imho since there is not anymore the HK “consulate here” and the TECO in HK is peculiar in their requirements.
thanks mate, much appreciate. I envy so much all the people living in countries/jurisdictions where bureaucracy is predictable, consistent and clear.
That’s because the various State BDM Offices don’t know that you have gotten married outside Australia, as they only record what happened under their own juristiction. Likewise for Deaths. Births outside Australia can be registered if at least one parent is an Australian Citizen at the time of the birth.
So, technically, as I was married in Taiwan, I could become a bigamist (but I won’t be) by returning to Australia and getting married to another person.
I actually know someone who does this. Old friend of my mum’s. Had a thing for African guys but her marriages would last a few months at most. She’d never divorce them and just go back to Africa and marry the next one. Rinse and repeat.
I think she did it 8-9 times. She’s obviously a nut-bag.
That’s the reason stated by the consulate for all this ordeal: fight bigamy by reducing to the minimum the possibilities of asynchronies between the Italian registry and any foreign one
I assume you have not been divorced (recently)? One might be able to use proof of registration of divorce as proof of single-ness for the time thereafter and not have to proof the entire period before that.
How would they for example check for the European union? You can travel and live and marry freely, you don’t see any stamps in the passport, and the countries don’t share marriage registrations with each other as far as I can tell. So if you never left the EU, how would Italy know that you’re not married in, say, France?
You can travel freely, yes, however if you want to enjoy public services you are required to report/register yourself to the country’s authorities to get some documents, like tax/health id, labour insurance id, etc …
