## The deadline that actually bites

The risk is not expiry. It is loss.

A lost certificate costs 25 euros to replace, and only within 2 years of the exam. After that
window there is no replacement. Duplicates are free only where the original was damaged in
delivery or contained an error that was CAPLE's own fault.

A citizenship process can run longer than two years, easily. If your certificate goes missing in
year three, the document is gone and the route back to proof is sitting the exam again.

## What to do on collection day

1. **Scan it immediately.** Both sides, at a readable resolution.
2. **Store the scan somewhere you will still have access to in a decade.** Not only a laptop. A
   laptop is not a ten-year storage medium, and neither is a phone.
3. **Store the physical certificate somewhere you would store a passport.**
4. **Note your candidate number and exam date alongside the scan.** You will need them for any
   replacement request, and they are exactly the details people cannot find years later.

## On requirements that change

The certificate itself is a record of an exam you passed on a date. What can change is what an
authority requires, and immigration and nationality rules in Portugal have been amended more than
once in recent years.

If your application is years away from the exam, check the current requirement through official
channels before you file rather than assuming the rule you researched still holds. That is general
prudence about a moving legal landscape, not a statement that CIPLE certificates lapse.

## If you are choosing when to sit the exam

There is no advantage in delaying to keep a certificate "fresh". If you are ready and you can get
a slot, sit it. The scarce resource in this process is exam availability, not certificate
validity.