Client story
Client's Story
Where they started
For Inna, the adopted child is simply her child, without any qualifications. They spent years together, and when the question of Malta citizenship by merit arose, there was no debate: status would be formalized for the entire family or not at all.
Why the standard route did not work
The complexity emerged during the document verification stage. The adoption was formalized many years ago, under the laws of a country that no longer exists on the map. Seals, forms, procedures—everything was from that era. For the Maltese authorities, such documents looked questionable: how could one be certain that the document was authentic and legally valid if the state that issued it no longer existed?
What BRIDGES had to solve
A real risk emerged that the adopted child would simply be excluded from the application as a person with unconfirmed kinship. This would mean the worst—the family would be divided by status: mother with citizenship, child without it.
Why a standard answer would not do
Inna contacted BRIDGES when she realized that the issue was not with the adoption itself, which was real and had occurred long ago, but rather in proving it documentarily in the language of modern law—in such a way that the Maltese authority would have no doubts.
For me, this was never "adopted"—this is my child, period. When they said they might not include him because of old papers, the ground disappeared from under my feet. Anna and her team assembled the entire chain of documents so thoroughly that there were no questions left, and we obtained status together.
