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My wife is a British Citizen and was BORN in the UK in 1986.
so I assume she is british citizen "otherwise by decent".

we got married in 2010 and she came to live with me in UAE. We had our first child in 2012 and at that time it was a simple process and we managed to get his consular birth Certificate which clearly mentions that his claim to British CitizenShip is based on S2(1)(a) British Nationality Act 1981 (by decent) . On my Son Consular Birth Certificate it is also mentioned that my wife claim to BC is based on S1(1)(A)
We applied for his UK passport and managed to get it easily in few weeks as expected. I also understand that my son wont be able to pass BC to his children if they are also born outside UK. So you must be thinking why i am writing this post ...
Now things get interesting and confusing, for my second son born in 2016 process got little bit changed and we were told that we dont need a Consular Birth Certifictae as they dont do it anymore and local BirthCertificate should be enough to apply for his passport. Now when we applied for my second son passport in 2016 we were asked to provide the naturalization/ILR documents for my son Grandparents. which we dont have them, and we have tried our best to get hold of them but to no vein ;( . All we have is the passport numbers of my son maternal grandparents

so i am not sure why they need to establish how my wife got British Nationality in 1986. Since she was born in UK as mentioned clearly in her BirthCertificate so it should be enough to prove that she is BC other wise by decent or I am missing something here.

When we visit UK even the guy at the border agency gets confused that why one Son has British passport and not second one

Now I need to reapply for my son passport, so I taught let me register his birth in UK as well ( not mandatory) and based on that I will apply. I did that last week and again we got the same feedback this time from Overseas Registration to provide details for Grandparents ..
Can my wife be British Citizen by decent although she was BORN in UK and lived all her life in UK

Any advice on this please.....

sqamar1 wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 27, 2019 10:06 pm

My wife is a British Citizen and was BORN in the UK in 1986.
so I assume she is british citizen "otherwise by decent".



so i am not sure why they need to establish how my wife got British Nationality in 1986. Since she was born in UK as mentioned clearly in her BirthCertificate so it should be enough to prove that she is BC other wise by decent or I am missing something here.

Being born in the UK does not make somebody a British citizen, that ended on 1st Jaunuary 1983, before your wife was born.

sqamar1 wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 27, 2019 10:06 pm

Now when we applied for my second son passport in 2016 we were asked to provide the naturalization/ILR documents for my son Grandparents.

If you are saying your wife was born a British citizen, she would have inherited that from a parent/s as she was born in the UK after 1st January 1983. This is why they want that evidence for your son for his grandparents (your wife's parents).

https://www.gov.uk/check-british-citize ... -were-born

the fundamental question is whether someone can be British Citizen "by decent" if he/she is born in the UK after 1983 ?
my understanding is that for all the people who are born in the UK and they become British Citizen can only be categorized as "otherwise than by decent"

https://www.gov.uk/apply-citizenship-br ... -july-2006

since my son was born outside UK and as per above link my wife should be able to pass BC to him as she was BORN in the UK and she is a British Citizen.

I am not sure what changed between 2012 and 2016 , as per eldest Son was able to get it without any issues as he was also born outside UK, so either they did a mistake earlier or they are doing a mistake now , unless some rules got changed after 2012 which I am not aware of.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 9__web.pdf

page 17 bottom mentions that grandparents details are not required if the applicant has provided the British passport number for parents’ in Section 4 of the application form..

based on the passport number they should be able to verify them self about how and when my wife got BC rather asking us to provide documents which are 40 years old and we dont have access to.
we tried with SAR and requests to National Archive and they dont seem to have anything related to my son maternal grandmother..

Just a suggestion. Can you find out the place and date of birth of the grand parents? If you do then the council of her birthplace should have the records available.

joeano353 wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 29, 2019 8:24 am

Just a suggestion. Can you find out the place and date of birth of the grand parents? If you do then the council of her birthplace should have the records available.

Grandparents were born outside UK, I have a proof that maternal Great Grandfather was naturalized in 1973 and as per him all his children became British based on his naturalization Certificate and they didn't get individuals certificates , not sure how this process worked in 1973 ...

They expect evidence that at least one of your wife’s parents was settled or British at the time of her birth.

vinny wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:13 pm

They expect evidence that at least one of your wife’s parents was settled or British at the time of her birth.

Since my wife mother was naturalised in 1980's so we had to contact National Archives and luckily they managed to give us her Certificate Number from name index referring to Acquisitions of British Nationality (ABN) they had. The index entry confirms the name, date and place of birth and date of registration.
so some good news here , but they also mentioned no duplicates Certificates have survived and this index entry is the only evidence of my wife's mother citizenship and hence no Certificated copies can be issued .
They also mentioned that this index entry should be suitable for any legal purposes.
They have also sent us scanned copy of index record.

So i am not sure will this be enough proof to show how my wife become British ?!? or we need to knock some other door now!!!