Client story
Client's Story
Where they started
Elena had known since childhood that her grandmother on her mother's side was Hungarian, from a village that was once part of Hungary. Her grandmother had been deceased for many years, as had her mother; her father had died even earlier. What remained of the Hungarian heritage was family memory and a few old photographs.
Why the standard route did not work
When Elena began considering an EU passport, the main difficulty became apparent. Ancestry-based citizenship depends on an unbroken chain of documents: grandmother - mother - Elena. Each generation must be confirmed by documentation. However, her mother's birth and death certificates had been lost, and her grandmother's birth record was somewhere in an old archive, if it had been preserved at all.
What BRIDGES had to solve
Without these two documents, the line was broken in the middle. It was necessary to prove that Elena was her mother's daughter, that her mother was the daughter of that very Hungarian grandmother, and that the grandmother was indeed born where family tradition claimed.
Why a standard answer would not do
Elena contacted BRIDGES, understanding that she would have to start almost from scratch - recovering documents of people who were no longer alive and searching for a record from a century ago.
It seemed hopeless to me: a Hungarian grandmother, but she, my mother, and my father had all been deceased for a long time, and I only had photographs. Anna explained that documents could be recovered even if the person was no longer alive. They obtained my mother's certificates through the civil registry office and my grandmother's birth record from the Transcarpathian archive, and worked through the fact that my grandmother's surname had changed. The line came together - and I received my passport.
