Passport nightmare - looking for advice

uncle_rufus

uncle_rufus

uncle_rufus

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Hey all,

Asking on behalf of my wife on the off-chance someone has any first-hand experience they can share on the matter... We got married fairly recently and so she's been sending off various documents and completing forms etc. so that they can update her name (on her driver's license, bank cards and such)...

All was well until we got to the passport... As instructed along with the old passport she had also enclosed a foreign passport - she moved here as a child (under 16) from South Africa and got a British passport (as entitled; her mother was born in the UK) and then applied for and got an adult's passport at age 20 (which was 10 years ago!)...

In the response it says she isn't allowed to update her name on the UK passport because it won't match the name on the (long expired) SA passport, and that we need to contact the SA embassy and have the old passport renewed (with updated name) first... She tried to explain that she's pretty sure she doesn't have dual nationality, and doesn't need or want the SA passport but they refused to discuss it any further...

Reading around it sounds to us like this is wrong - if you search around online the consensus seems to be that if you apply for and accept a passport in a different country you are implicitly renouncing your citizenship in SA (unless you explicitly state that you want to retain it, which she never did)...

It all has us a bit worried, as the process for renouncing citizenship (if it turns out she needs to) is said to take "at least 12 months" and we've got a holiday booked next summer. We've sent an email to the SA embassy to explain the situation but they're not open at the moment so we won't get a reply until the week (if we're lucky!)

Anyone got any ideas or experiences to share?
 
Edit: From the horse's mouth:
https://www.sahc.org.au/citizenship/Dual_Citizenship.htm

The South African Citizenship Act provides for retention of South African citizenship PRIOR to the acquisition of a foreign citizenship. A condition of attaining dual citizenship for all South African citizens aged 18 years or older is that they must apply and be granted permission to retain their South African citizenship prior to the acquisition of a foreign citizenship.

If a South African citizen does not obtain this prior permission they will automatically lose their South African citizenship on voluntary acquisition of a foreign citizenship.

South African citizens under the age of 18 years are exempt and do not require to apply for dual citizenship, as long as they acquire the foreign citizenship before their 18th birthday. They automatically retain their South African citizenship for life unless, once they have reached the age of 18 years and they then wish to acquire a further foreign citizenship, they will then have to apply for prior permission to retain their South African citizenship. Failing to do so, they will automatically lose their South African citizenship.
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Your wife became a UK citizen as a child so retained her SA citizenship.

Getting the updated SA passport and then applying for the new UK passport will be the simplest way out of this. Paying for two passports is a pain but worthwhile if it means avoiding a long argument with the Passport Office.
 
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I should not matter as she will have indefinite leave to remain.

Sounds like an amature examiner has viewed her application.
 
itchy said:
I should not matter as she will have indefinite leave to remain.

Sounds like an amature examiner has viewed her application.
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I don't think it has anything to do with leave to remain, and more to do with ensuring dual nationals have the same details across their two citizenships.
 
A new policy came into the passport office last year. “One name for all purposes” I believe this is to try and stop people running two id’s. Unfortunately they will not renew your wife’s passport in her new name until she changes her S/A passport, or provides a letter from S/A consulate confirming that they won’t change it . Hope that helps - both me and my partner work in the passport office
 
TJM said:
Your wife became a UK citizen as a child so retained her SA citizenship.
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We had seen the site you linked too (although I'd say since it's the Australian government's site it's not exactly "straight from the horses mouth" - we had a good look on the actual SA site and couldn't find anything better though)... Reading it again and thinking about it very literally I guess that is the problem - we had assumed that her applying for her first adult passport in the UK would have triggered the automatic renouncement of her SA citizenship (but I guess that's not how it works; you get citizenship as a one-time thing (per country) so once a UK citizen as a child (and retaining the SA citizenship) that status has remained)...

Apolloman said:
A new policy came into the passport office last year. “One name for all purposes” I believe this is to try and stop people running two id’s. Unfortunately they will not renew your wife’s passport in her new name until she changes her S/A passport, or provides a letter from S/A consulate confirming that they won’t change it . Hope that helps - both me and my partner work in the passport office
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Thanks for this - hopefully once we speak to the consulate there will be something they can do - perhaps if they can acknowledge that the current (active, but long expired) passport has been cancelled and that the SA govt will not be issuing another in the old name (either because she has applied under the new name, or started the process of dropping the old citizenship) that will be enough... Or perhaps we do have time to apply for a new SA passport and then once that goes through re-apply for a UK one...

norm said:
Let her keep her surname and you change yours. Equality and all that.
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A bit late for that - I wouldn't have had a problem with it either way but it was her decision and she wanted to take the name (maybe if she'd known about this she might have chosen differently though who knows!)
 
uncle_rufus said:
We had seen the site you linked too (although I'd say since it's the Australian government's site it's not exactly "straight from the horses mouth"
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It's the website of South Africa's High Commission in Australia (a 'High Commission' being the equivalent of an embassy between Commonwealth nations) so it was written by the SA government. There's no guarantee that the author has correctly interpreted the law but it's a pretty good bet.

Reading it again and thinking about it very literally I guess that is the problem - we had assumed that her applying for her first adult passport in the UK would have triggered the automatic renouncement of her SA citizenship (but I guess that's not how it works; you get citizenship as a one-time thing (per country) so once a UK citizen as a child (and retaining the SA citizenship) that status has remained)...
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That is my reading of it. The automatic revocation of SA citizenship only happens if you take up another country's citizenship as an adult; your wife became a UK citizen as a child so that rule has no relevance to her situation.
 
norm said:
Let her keep her surname and you change yours. Equality and all that.
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This is exactly what me and wife did, after applying for various visa's here in the UK I could see these sort of problems coming from a mile away. She keeps her name, we couldn't care less who takes who's name.

As for OP as stated I'd just pay the fee for a new SA passport with new surname and be done with it, not worth the hassle of the passport office, been there done that its not a pleasant experience.
 
Couldnt renew my daughters US passport until we renewed he British one first, she was born in the UK both passports had expired.
 
As a fellow saffer, good luck dealing with the home office. You're gonna need patience. A LOT of patience.
 
This probably won’t help a South African, but when my elder son, with dual British and German citizenship, by virtue of being born in the U.K., but married to a German woman, migrated to Australia, he was told that he couldn’t become an Australian citizen unless he renounced one of his dual citizenships.
He made up his mind to give up the U.K. one, as he said that he’d rather live in Siberia than ever return to live in the U.K.
It turned out to be erroneous info, he could have had tri nationality, but he moved back to Germany, as his wife became homesick, my Anglo-German grandsons were gutted, they loved Australia, and tanned Aussie girls.
 
Worst case scenario; couldn't you just change the name your flights are booked in, back to her maiden name and save having to update any passports?
 
div0 said:
Worst case scenario; couldn't you just change the name your flights are booked in, back to her maiden name and save having to update any passports?
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I think there are probably reasons why we wouldn't be able to do that, but in this case it doesn't matter either way as her UK passport expires in February anyway (we're travelling next August)
 
Your wife can always renew her passport in her maiden name and have no issues travelling on it, my wife didn't change the name on hers for years as she had only renewed it the year before we got married and it seemed like a pointless expense. It should be relatively straight forward and cheap to change the names on your holiday flights and if you say it'a a 'honeymoon' and the passport office messed up they might do it for free.
 
I recently got married and my wife travelled on her 'old' passport showing her maiden name, the important thing is that the name on the travel documentation must be the same as the name on the passport.

When we got back she changed her passport details, no rush..
 
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