Civil Status refers to the sum of acts and events concerning the life of a citizen: birth, marriage, death, divorce and citizenship, registration of which falls within the remit of the Office of Vital Records, whose functions are performed in Italy by municipal offices and abroad by consular offices.
Italian citizens are required to inform the local consular office where the event takes place.
Certificates issued for civil status changes that take place abroad may be submitted by the parties concerned, or by anyone else involved, either directly to the office of the Italian municipality of residence (see art. 12, par. 11, DPR 396/2000) or to the consular office (either that of the parties concerned or of the jurisdiction in which the certificates are issued).
Certificates issued by countries who are signatories to the Vienna Convention of 8 September 1976, must be issued using multilingual forms (Apostille) and are exempt from legalization and translation.
Those countries are: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey.
To register a birth, a marriage, a divorce or a death happened in South Africa the citizen interested must provide the Unabridged Certificate in Original; such certificate can be requested to the South African Department of Home Affairs.
This shall be firstly submitted to DIRCO (Department of international relationship and cooperation) in Pretoria for the mandatory Apostille which legalize the document.