What Nationality Does an Adopted Child Have

What Nationality Does an Adopted Child Have

Adoption changes who a child’s legal parents are. It does not, by itself, change the child’s nationality. That single point resolves most of the worry that adoptive parents bring to the question, and it works in both directions. A Vietnamese child adopted by foreigners does not lose Vietnamese nationality on the day the adoption is approved, and a foreign child adopted by Vietnamese parents does not automatically shed their original nationality either. What the law does set out, in Article 37 of the Law on Vietnamese Nationality, is how Vietnamese nationality attaches to an adopted child in each situation. The outcome depends on the direction of the adoption and on who the adoptive parents are.

Adoption Does Not Automatically Change a Child’s Nationality

It helps to separate two things that often get merged. The adoption decision settles the parent-child relationship. Nationality is governed by a different body of law, the Law on Vietnamese Nationality, and it follows its own rules. A court or authority approving an adoption is not, at the same time, granting or cancelling a nationality. This is why an adopted child can and often does end up holding two nationalities, one from birth and one connected to the adoptive family, rather than trading one for the other.

For adoptive parents, the practical consequence is that nationality has to be thought about as its own step, with its own paperwork, rather than assumed to follow the adoption automatically. The rest of this article walks through what Article 37 provides for each of the common situations.

When Foreigners Adopt a Vietnamese Child

This is the situation most foreign adoptive parents ask about, usually with real anxiety behind it. The reassuring answer is in Article 37(1): a Vietnamese child who is adopted by a foreigner retains Vietnamese nationality. The adoption does not strip the child of their Vietnamese nationality, and no one has to apply to keep it. It stays unless and until it is formally given up through a separate renunciation process.

In practice, what usually happens next is that the child also acquires the nationality of the adoptive parents, under the law of the parents’ own country. Vietnam does not control that second step, the receiving country does, but the result is that the child commonly becomes a dual national, Vietnamese by origin and a citizen of the adoptive parents’ country as well. For a family planning to raise the child abroad, this point deserves attention early on. The child’s Vietnamese nationality does not lapse through absence or disuse, so if it is ever to be relinquished, that has to be done deliberately and through the proper channel, not left to assumption.

When Vietnamese Citizens Adopt a Foreign Child

The reverse situation is governed by Article 37(2). Where a foreign child is adopted by Vietnamese citizens, the child acquires Vietnamese nationality from the date a competent Vietnamese agency approves the adoption. Nationality here flows from the approval itself, dated to that approval rather than to the day the application was filed, and the child does not have to go through a separate naturalisation process to become Vietnamese.

Whether the child also keeps their original foreign nationality is a question for the law of that other country, in the same way that the receiving country decides the outcome in the opposite case. Vietnamese law sets what it can set, which is the child’s Vietnamese nationality, and leaves the foreign side to the foreign authority.

When One Adoptive Parent Is Vietnamese and One Is Foreign

Mixed-nationality couples are a common case, and Article 37 treats them separately. Where a foreign child is adopted by a couple in which one parent is a Vietnamese citizen and the other is foreign, the child may be naturalised as a Vietnamese citizen on an application made by the adoptive parents, and is exempt from the ordinary naturalisation conditions that would otherwise apply. The key difference from the fully Vietnamese couple is that the child’s Vietnamese nationality here comes through an application the parents make, rather than attaching automatically on approval of the adoption. It is an available route, not an automatic result, so the application itself is where the care is needed.

Dual Nationality and the 2025 Change in the Law

Vietnam has long followed a single-nationality principle. Article 4 of the Law on Vietnamese Nationality states the default that a Vietnamese citizen holds only Vietnamese nationality, except where the law provides otherwise. The retention rule for adopted children is one of those express exceptions, which is why a Vietnamese child adopted abroad can lawfully hold two nationalities.

What has shifted is the surrounding attitude to dual nationality. The amendment to the Law on Vietnamese Nationality, Law No. 79/2025/QH15, in force from 1 July 2025, relaxed Vietnam’s historically strict stance. Among other changes, it allows certain applicants to keep a foreign nationality when they acquire or restore Vietnamese nationality, including minors who have a Vietnamese parent, provided this complies with the other country’s law and does not harm Vietnam’s interests. For adoptive families, this points in a helpful direction. A dual-nationality outcome for an adopted child, once treated as an awkward exception, now sits within a framework that accommodates dual nationality more openly than before. The specific rules in Article 37 continue to govern adopted children, but they now operate against a more permissive backdrop.

Changing an Adopted Child’s Nationality Later

Some families later want the child to hold a single nationality rather than two, often because the receiving country does not allow dual nationality, or simply because the parents prefer it. The route for that is renunciation of Vietnamese nationality, and the key thing to understand is that it is applied for and approved, not a box the family can tick on its own. Under Article 27 of the Law on Vietnamese Nationality, a Vietnamese citizen who is acquiring a foreign nationality may be permitted to renounce Vietnamese nationality, but permission is withheld in defined situations, including where the person still owes tax or property obligations in Vietnam, where a criminal matter is unresolved, or where renunciation would harm national interests. Certain categories of people cannot renounce at all. For an ordinary adopted child these bars rarely apply, but the principle holds: renunciation is something the authorities grant, not something the family decides on its own.

Where the person whose nationality would change is a child, the parents drive the application and the older child has a say in it. A child aged 15 to under 18 must consent to the change, so a teenager is not moved between nationalities on the adults’ decision alone. And where only one parent gives up Vietnamese nationality, a child living with that parent loses it only if both parents agree in writing. Changing an adopted child’s nationality is a deliberate, conditional step, with the child’s own position built into it for older children, rather than an administrative afterthought.

Where the Nationality Question Becomes Difficult

The rules themselves are not complicated. In real cases, the rule is rarely the hard part, and the complications come from what surrounds it. A child who retains Vietnamese nationality still needs that nationality documented and kept current if it is to be usable later, particularly for a child living abroad who may one day want a Vietnamese passport or to establish a claim here. Where an adoption has a foreign element, the Vietnamese nationality position has to be coordinated with the receiving country’s own nationality and immigration rules, which do not always line up neatly with Vietnam’s.

These are the points where getting advice early makes the later steps simpler. The nationality question is simple to state in general terms and much easier to get wrong in a specific case, especially when more than one country’s law is in play. If you are also weighing the adoption process itself, our guide to intercountry adoption in Vietnam covers how an adoption is approved, and for nationality acquired at birth rather than through adoption, our guide to citizenship for a child of mixed-nationality parents addresses that distinct route.

How We Help Adoptive Families Secure a Child’s Nationality

An adopted child’s nationality is easiest to settle at the time of the adoption, while the records are fresh and both countries’ requirements can be handled together. Dealing with it then, rather than leaving it to be sorted out much later, is simply the smoother path. Our team of family lawyers advises Vietnamese and foreign adoptive families on securing and documenting an adopted child’s nationality, coordinating the Vietnamese position with the law of the other country involved, and handling naturalisation or renunciation where it is needed. We have guided many families, including foreign nationals from a wide range of countries, through adoption and the nationality questions that follow it. Reach us at [email protected].