Your great‑grandfather may never have stopped being Polish.

There is no generation limit in Polish law. A great-grandparent can carry a valid claim, and so can someone further back. What limits a case is never the number of generations — it is whether the chain of citizenship survived each of them, and whether documents still exist to prove it.

This is worth saying plainly because Italy reformed its own ancestry route in 2025 and cut it back to a parent or grandparent. Poland has made no such change.

No, and this catches almost everyone. Poland does not grant citizenship by place of birth. Being born on Polish soil and holding Polish citizenship are two different things, and a birth certificate proves only the first.

It is still a valuable document and you should keep it safe — it usually tells us which parish and which archive to search. But the claim is built from the whole chain, not from one certificate.

Both, and this is where we disagree with how the question is usually answered. You will read that American documents carry no weight in a Polish proceeding. That needs a qualification: an American certificate cannot prove Polish citizenship, because only Polish records do that. But it is often the most important document in your case, because the date on it is what tells us whether the chain broke.

Naturalising as an American before 19 January 1951 generally extinguished Polish citizenship. Naturalising after that date did not. One date on one certificate often decides more than anything else in the file, which is why we order it before we quote you for full representation.

No. Citizenship by descent runs through parents, not through marriage. Your children, however, may hold Polish citizenship through your spouse — that is assessed on your spouse's records. And as the family member of an EU citizen, you generally have the right to live with them in another EU country under EU free-movement rules.

Yes, and it is the most efficient thing you will do. Minor children can be applied for alongside you on the same archival research. Adult children file their own applications but on the same evidence base, at a reduced fee.

One caution: applications for a family are decided against the same ancestral line, so an error in one file can affect the others. That is an argument for preparing them together and carefully, not for splitting them up.

Not a word. There is no language requirement for citizenship by descent — it is a different route entirely from naturalisation.

The proceeding itself is conducted in Polish, which is the reason to have a Polish lawyer rather than the reason to learn the language. You deal with us in English from start to finish.

No, at no point. There is no residency requirement and you never need to set foot in the country. The in-person steps come at the passport stage, at a Polish consulate — and there are consulates across the United States.

Not under Polish law: confirming a Polish citizenship you already held does not require you to renounce any other. The United States generally permits dual citizenship, but that is a question of US law, on which we do not advise — if it matters to you, confirm it with a US-qualified adviser.

If you hold a security clearance or a sensitive government position, raise it with your own agency rather than with us — reporting obligations vary and we will not guess at them.

Citizenship and tax residency are separate things in Polish law. Broadly, Poland taxes people who have their centre of personal or economic interests there, or who spend more than 183 days a year in the country. A Polish citizen living and working in the United States generally falls outside both tests.

We are not tax advisers and this is not tax advice. If your situation is complicated — property, a business, income arising in Europe — take it to a tax professional before you file.

Compulsory basic military service in Poland was suspended in 2009, and service today is voluntary. How Polish defence rules apply to a citizen living permanently abroad depends on the circumstances, and the rules can change; we will tell you what applies in your son's case.

An apostille is a certificate confirming that a public document is genuine, issued under the 1961 Hague Convention so that one country's records can be relied on in another. In practice it means each state-issued certificate has to be authenticated by the Secretary of State of the state that issued it — a New York birth certificate by New York, an Illinois marriage record by Illinois. Federal records, such as naturalisation files, are apostilled by the US Department of State.

It cannot be done in one place for a whole family, which is one of the quiet reasons this takes as long as it does. We handle it.

Because almost none of it is under anyone's control. The statute gives the authority six months to decide, but that clock legally stops every time the file is waiting on another office — and in a great-grandparent case it is waiting on archives, registries and record offices on two continents for most of its life.

Plan on three to five years from first email to passport in hand. No one can responsibly promise you a firm date.

Yes, and this is more common than it should be. A confirmation decision does not by itself produce a passport: your birth and marriage records first have to be entered into the Polish civil registry, and you need a PESEL number. If a name is transliterated inconsistently across those documents — one spelling on the decision, another on the transcription — the file stalls and can go round in circles for years.

If you are stuck at this stage, get in touch. It is a discrete piece of work and usually a fixable one.

We tell you, in the first weeks rather than the third year, and we stop. That is what the assessment is for.

Where the line does not hold, there is sometimes a different route worth considering — the Karta Polaka, which recognises Polish origin without granting citizenship, has been open to applicants in the United States and Canada since 2019. It is not a passport and we will not pretend otherwise, but for some families it is the right answer.