Can parents withhold their birth certificate/marriage license from their kids I had a falling-out with my parents awhile ago. Haven't talked to them in almost two years. They were born in the Czech Republic. I am wanting to apply for a dual citizenship in CZ, which is easy as long as your parents were born in Czech. All they require is a copy of your parent's birth certificates as well as a copy of their marriage license. Two weeks ago, I sent my parents a letter, asking them for these documents, along with a return envelope, but it seems like they are unwilling to cooperate. Is there a way to get these documents, legally, in order that I might be able to obtain my dual CZ citizenship?
The Czech Consulate General in New York has a page about this. Presumably a similar situation would prevail at other Czech consulates, so this answer should help even if you do not reside in its territory. The page notes that if you are not &quot;a relative&quot; you can &quot;enclose an explanation letter why do you need the duplicate of the birth [or marriage] certificate.&quot; So it's possible that they'd give you a copy anyway, but, to increase your chances, you might want to include a letter explaining that you need the document to demonstrate your own Czech nationality. You can also include a copy of your birth certificate as evidence of your relationship. The page links to the forms you have to submit with the request for the certificate. They reflect the same possibility, slightly more specifically. The birth certificate application says 6. V případě, že nejste v tabulce, uveďte vztah k dítěti nebo jiný právní zájem: 6. In case you are not the person in a table, relation must be stated or any other legal interest: As far as I can tell &quot;the person in a table&quot; means &quot;a person in the list of birth certificates being requested with this form.&quot; That is, you don't need to explain yourself if you are the child whose birth certificate it is, nor if you are one of the parents shown on the certificate. The marriage certificate form similarly says 6. V případě, že nejste osobou uvedenou v tabulce, uveďte vztah k osobám nebo jiný právní zájem (If the applicant is not listed in the table below as the Husband or Wife, please provide an explanation of the relationship or legal interest which authorizes this submission.): This last sentence hints at the one thing that I unfortunately do not know, which is the criteria for judging whether a given explanation is legally sufficient to authorize the release of the certificate to the person who submitted the application. I guess your case is as good as it gets, but it's possible that the law prevents the certificates to be issued to you while your parents are still alive.
The location of your residence entrance is irrelevant for the law, what matters most is your "street address", i.e. mailing address. That is the address (therefore city) that you use for voter registration, and basically how you identify "where I live". If you lives 5 miles out in the country in an unincorporated area, you'd still use Needles (e.g.) as you mailing address: but you would not be able to vote for a mayor of Needles, just based on your mailing address. Both municipalities might claim jurisdiction based on the physical location of the property, especially for matters of building code. It should not be possible for both municipalities to tax the full value of your property, but they could split the assessment proportionally. The cities themselves are not collecting the tax, the county is (though property straddling a county line raises an interesting question).
Assuming that the age of criminal responsibility in your jurisdiction is more than five (I don't know any jurisdictions where it isn't), then you can't be arrested for this. It is possible that the therapist will have to report the information, and it will appear on your record if you apply to work with vulnerable people. On the other hand, if your parents put you up for adoption aged five (but kept a sister), they will have had to explain why - and that is likely to have been recorded (unless this is so long ago that record keeping was much more lax in those days). I would recommend finding a different therapist that is more comfortable being told about these things. You might also need to consult a lawyer for a short while (they will often offer a 30 minute free consultation).
One often has to show a family relationship or other legitimate grounds to access a death certificate even though it is a public record and I suspect that this is the case in Nebraska as well. But anyone who has access to a death certificate has access to all of it, including the cause of death. If the cause of death is initially undetermined, the coroner's office would have discretion about whether to update the death certificate as new information becomes available to the coroner, and a family member could make a personal appeal to the coroner not to exercise his discretion in this manner. But there is no legal grounds upon which a family would have a right to go to court to prevent a coroner from updating a death certificate on any grounds. Keep in mind also that cause of death on a death certificate isn't even a complete sentence worth of explanation and is in very medical/scientific terminology. Some government investigation reports are available for the public to see in an open records request under state law, but there is usually an exception for ongoing criminal investigations which is calculated to provide tactical benefit to the government in its efforts to catch criminals, rather than to preserve the feelings of the next of kin. There might be grounds for the next of kin to ask a court to redact a government investigation report which would otherwise be available to the public in an open records request, and to seal the unredacted copy, either because leaving it open could facilitate identity theft, or because the material revealed would appeal to the prurient interests of third-parties reading it without advancing a valid public interest (i.e. if it would be basically pornographic for many people requesting it).
Indeed, it is not possible to be European "twice or more," but that doesn't prevent the possession of multiple EU nationalities. A person who possesses the nationality of an EU country is a citizen of the European Union, and a person who possesses the nationality of more than one EU country is also a citizen of the European Union. This follows from Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union: 1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship. There is no unified EU nationality law; each member state determines the conditions for the acquisition and loss of its nationality. Some EU countries have ratified the 1968 Convention on the Reduction of Cases of Multiple Nationality and on Military Obligations in Cases of Multiple Nationality, and others have not. Germany ratified it and later denounced it. Among other provisions, this convention specifies that a national of one participating state who acquires the nationality of another participating state should lose the first nationality. But it does not seem to prohibit the simultaneous acquisition at birth of multiple nationalities, nor to require someone with multiple nationalities acquired at birth to renounce any nationality at any time. There is also the 1997 European Convention on Nationality, also ratified by only a subset of EU countries. This convention explicitly provides that states must allow certain cases of multiple nationality, and may allow other cases. The mandatory cases are those of a person having multiple nationalities automatically from birth and of a person acquiring another nationality automatically through marriage (Art. 14(1)). Therefore, the general answer to your question Is it permissible, under a European legal framework, to hold two EU citizenships? is yes. It is not, however, generally possible for every citizen of an EU country to acquire the nationality of another EU country without losing his or her original nationality. That is not a feature of EU law, however, but of each country's domestic law. The specific possibilities for any given person depend on the countries involved and on the manner in which each country's nationality has been acquired or will be acquired.
If the passport that was stolen is a U.S. one, you should report it by any of the channels outlined on the State Department's page Lost or Stolen Passports. The paper-reporting option is via form DS-64, which asks, among other things, whether you filed a police report; so it might be good to do that first. Form N-565 is a similar form for requesting the reissue of a naturalization certificate, and it, likewise, asks about any police report. Withholding someone's ID documents, knowing that they are necessary for travel, would be "false imprisonment" under both state and federal statutes. Also, 18 USC §§1426 and 1427 cover the crimes of "Reproduction of naturalization or citizenship papers" and "Sale of naturalization or citizenship papers"; a 10-year felony for a first offence. "Whosoever unlawfully ... disposes of a ... certificate of naturalization, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ... 10 years (in the case of the first or second such offense, if the offense was not committed to facilitate such an act of international terrorism or a drug trafficking crime)," If the police take your report but don't scare the possessor of your documentation into immediately returning it, you could sue him or her for the actual expenses of obtaining replacements in Small Claims court. If the mispossessed passport causes big enough damages, I guess you could sue in any court that has jurisdiction.
I don't know about that particular case, but you are basically right: In Switzerland, if you want to apply for citizenship, you apply for it in the municipality first. Everybody having the citizenship of the municipality has the swiss citizenship as well. In theory, the canton and the state also have something to say, but that's irrelevant for most applications. This has historic reasons, but going into the details is beyond the scope of this question. Fact is, that every municipality has its own rules, about when and how applications are handled. This has been unified a bit in recent years, but some things still differ. That is for instance, how many years you need to have lived there or who decides your application. There were municipalities (actually most) where the final decision was made using a public vote. This practice was declared illegal by the federal court some years ago, because becoming a citizen is a formal governmental act, and as such a reason needs to be given for turning an application down. This is inherently impossible with a vote. Since that law decision, most municipalities have shifted the responsibility to a committee for citizenship applications. The public can still bring in arguments, but they need to be justified (ie. if somebody knows about the applicant being a wanted criminal somewhere). Consequently, you can now call for a court to check whether the given reasoning is correct and just, if you are turned down.
You have not committed a crime or a violation of non-criminal law when you swear something under oath believing in good faith that what you are saying is true, and you are mistaken. The law does not expect omniscience. Also, making a false statement under oath is only sanctionable if you make a false statement of a &quot;material fact.&quot; Whether or not you have a Social Security number is not a &quot;material fact&quot; in the context of a passport application where the material facts are that you are the same person as the person described in your birth certificate, that the parents there are to the best of your knowledge your parents, that the birth certificate is authentic, and that you have not renounced U.S. citizenship. The question about a Social Security number is there for administrative convenience, not to make any determination about your right to a passport. You should apply for a Social Security number. If you already have one, your actions consistent with not having one will only corroborate the fact that you were ignorant of that fact when you applied for a passport, and you will have your existing Social Security number provided to you. As a practical matter it is unlikely that you have one. There are no forms that your non-U.S. parents would have to be filled out that would have required one, and you know that you haven't applied for one in the past. Before Social Security numbers of dependents were required on U.S. tax forms, most people didn't get Social Security numbers until they got their first job.