Self-certification of family status: what it is and what it is for

Nand relationships with the Public Administration or with various private entities, we may be asked for the Family Status. This name refers to the document that indicates the residence and composition of the registered family, a sort of list of all the people who live in a certain house or apartment, even if there is no relationship of kinship between them.
The certificate in question can be easily obtained by going in person to the appropriate counter of your municipality or by requesting it to be sent by post, where the local authority offers this service. Alternatively, it can then be requested online at the institutional website of the same municipality. For those who do not like the complications that could arise, it is however possible to produce it in self-certification.

Self-certification: how does it work?

The possibility of resorting to theself-certification of family status It was introduced into our legal system starting from 2012. It is a document containing a signed declaration of the holder of the document itself, which can be used in relations with the Public Administration, or with schools, hospitals, Local Health Authorities and other similar entities.
Self-certification can also be used in the case of companies or entities that manage, or have concessions for, public services, a category that includes, for example, electricity and gas suppliers or local transport companies. Self-certification can also be produced in relations with private entities, for example banks, but in this case it will be the counterparty who decides whether to accept it or not. The possibility is instead to be excluded in the case of the judicial authority, for obvious reasons.

What happens if you make a false statement?

Self-certification is therefore a valid tool to bypass bureaucratic delays and simplify relationships with a long list of entities, especially public ones. In the case of the Family Status, its validity is six months, after which the document does not cease to be useful, provided that the user who uses it declares that the composition of the nucleus has not undergone changes in the meantime. Carrying out this operation involves simply adding this declaration to the bottom of the document, and then adding the interested party's signature.
However, it must be remembered that the declaration must correspond to the truth. Making false declarations in self-certification, even in the Family Status, can in fact expose one to the risk of an inspection by the supervisory authorities. A violation of this kind, on the basis of the provisions of Presidential Decree 445/2000, consolidated text of legislative and regulatory provisions on administrative documentation, is in fact equated to a real criminal offence, ideological forgery, such as to trigger civil and criminal consequences against the author of the false declaration, starting with a prison sentence.