The Mass Wedding Ceremony

The CCSS (or CAJA as it is generally known) has a regulation called the Registration Handbook or Manual de Adscripción y Beneficio Familiar, as it is called in Spanish.

The purpose of this regulation is to set forth the requirements and processes to register people with the system, whether it is a principal beneficiary or whether it is a dependent such as a spouse or children. Under the dependent category, it is also possible to register dependent parents, as well as brothers and sisters.

Today, we are going to talk about the registration requirements for spouses, primarily the marriage certificate requirement. Section 20 of the handbook requires three documents from the spouse in order to achieve registration. Namely: a valid ID, a marriage certificate (or birth certificate to register a child), and proof of address which is generally demonstrated by a utility bill, title of the property or lease agreement. For the purpose of our conversation today, we will focus on the marriage certificate.

Section 20.2 indicates that the marriage certificate (or birth certificate) must be no more than a month old. This requirement is not a problem for a Costa Rican. There are plenty of Registry offices around the country where they can obtain a marriage or a birth certificate for less than 50 colones. This requirement for the certificate to be no more than a month old was certainly created keeping only Costa Ricans in mind. It is obvious that the drafters of the handbook were not thinking about foreigners. There are people from more than a hundred countries living in Costa Rica, and for every single one of them, it is a tremendous task to obtain a brand new marriage certificate, and in most cases, it is very expensive.

In some jurisdictions, it takes at least six weeks for the government agency to issue the birth certificate, such as is the case in Hawaii and Louisiana. In some countries, such as China, or Venezuela, obtaining a birth certificate or a marriage certificate is daunting task. Not to mention, that the CAJA clerks require the document to be authenticated, which can mean another month or two before the document arrives to Costa Rica. Therefore, for most people, it is literally impossible to comply with this requirement to produce a document no older than a month from the date of issuance. Therefore, the requirement is unfair and discriminatory as it did not contemplate the difficulty to obtain such document from abroad.

Interestingly enough, section 21 of the handbook, sets forth the requirement for same sex couples to get registered under CAJA. In my opinion, I think it is very progressive of CAJA to allow same sex couples to get a partner registered in a country where same sex marriage is not allowed.  The issue here is not whether same sex couples should be allowed to get married or not, however, I believe they should be allowed. But the issue is that while same sex couples are allowed to register their partners without producing a marriage certificate, then why would they require a legally married couple to produce a marriage certificate under such impossible circumstances?

Furthermore, section 21 allows couples living in common law marriage to complete registration for their common law spouses so long as they provide two witnesses and an affidavit. But section 21 only allows this option to Costa Ricans, foreigners are not allowed to register a partner under the common law provision of the handbook.

Obviously, the drafters of the handbook do not place a lot of significance on whether people are married as it allows common law partners including same sex partners to get registered as dependents.

As discussed, while we know that people married in Costa Rica can comply with marriage certificate requirement, foreigners cannot. Thus, we are bringing the case to the Supreme Court under the equal protection clause of Section 19 and Section 33 of the Costa Rican Constitution.

In addition, we will be celebrating a mass wedding ceremony for all foreigners who want to be able to obtain marriage certificate from Costa Rica. If you are married in Costa Rica, then you will be able to comply with the requirement to produce a marriage certificate not older than a month. Thus, avoiding the need to obtain a marriage certificate from abroad.

The wedding ceremony will be on February 14^th, 2016 at 2pm in the central park of Atenas. The deadline to provide the required information for the wedding ceremony will be Sunday February 7^th. You can provide the information by completing a form on this page.  You can also reach Pat Wagner who is coordinating the event. You can reach her by clicking here. If you do not want or need to get married, we will still be very thankful for your support. We would like to create awareness of the difficulties that foreigners have in Costa Rica, so your presence will be appreciated.

Thank you for your support.