Trip to San Diego

I set out for San Diego, California to help a client who, due to health issues, could neither come to Costa Rica nor to a Costa Rican consulate in the United States. She is, more or less,  confined in an assisted living facility. She contacted us because she wanted to make a will for her assets in Costa Rica as well as granting a Power of Attorney to her sister, to be able to manage all her affairs in Costa Rica.

Fortunately, she could pay for the fees and expenses of having a Costa Rican notary public traveling to California to assist with those transactions that are to have legal effect on Costa Rican soil.

It was a pleasant and stimulating experience to coordinate the drafting of the documents that were to be signed by the client. Quite a few emails were exchanged back and forth between the client’s sister and step daughter in order to obtain a whole deal of personal and other information required to produce the will and power of attorney. During this process we understood how important this was to this family since there was a noticeable amount of real state in her name in Costa Rica.

I believe that all clients are to be treated equally regardless of what services they hire. Still I could not help but continue thinking of how concerned I would be if I was in poor health and having uncertainty lingering over my head as to what would happen to my estate located so far away.  My only hope would be to set up a will that would bring peace and order to my family in the event of my passing. Just the thought of a nasty, contentious probate process abroad makes me nauseous.

Gladly, it took only about two weeks from the time we reached an agreement with the client and the moment of the signing of both documents at the client’s room in the assisted living facility.

According to Costa Rican law, a will requires a total of three witnesses that must meet certain requirements, the most important ones are being able to show a passport, and not being related to the grantor of the will. This posed somewhat of a challenge, which required about seventy-two hours to be surmounted, but they were ultimately completed.

One of the witnesses turned out to be the client’s lifelong legal counsel in the United States. This proved to be both helpful and comforting. Why? It was good to know that there would be another person scrutinizing my work and also looking after my client’s interests. This attorney also spoke some Spanish as well. I feel this fact gave added legitimacy to of both transactions ensuring that the client was signing the documents freely and willingly but also fully understanding their legal implications and content, allowing complete transparency of the process.

It is true that the common law and civil law systems are very different from each other, nevertheless an honest, open and straight forward dialogue/conversation between both counselors can go a long way to further the client’s interests in both countries.

I must touch upon another aspect of this adventure. I would say it is a sociological side that touches close to home. The person who hired our services and the person who the services were provided to, are sisters. They are Costa Rican women who have lived for many years in the United States. The sister who hired us did return to Costa Rica to live and they obviously both have strong ties to the USA. As for myself, I was born and raised in Costa Rica to a US national and a Costa Rican. My mother and my father were married in Costa Rica in 1979 and have since resided there. I grew up in a bi-national, bi- cultural, bi-lingual home in Heredia Costa Rica. I have never resided in the United States nor stayed longer than three or four weeks. Nevertheless, the United States and the English language have always been an essential part of me just as important as Costa Rica and the Spanish language.  I cannot sincerely part from neither. It is who I am I could never turn my back to either influence.

Having said this, I hope you can understand were I’m coming from. I was there for a rewarding experience, to lend a helping hand to anther tico-gringo family, this time on US soil.

Additionally, the witness US attorney did speak some Spanish but that is not all; his daughter a college age student, was also one of the three witnesses and the woman they called wife and mother so happens to actually be Mexican, hence the daughter is as naturally English/Spanish bilingual as he who writes these lines.

I must add, as a child of a mixed language family, being bilingual must not be taken for granted and does not happen as naturally or as easy as one would want to think.  In my parents’ case, it took an intentional plan and effort on their behalf to speak English only at home and let kindergarten, the street, the Costa Rican friends and family teach me Spanish. The same type of intention must have taken place in this attorneys’ home.

I continue to reside in Costa Rica with my Tica wife, and a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. We continue to follow a similar plan with our girl. My wife communicates with her in Spanish and I communicate with her only in English. It is a slower and harder process, but it is slowly bearing fruit, I have no doubt that my baby girl will grow as bilingual as her dad.

I hope you liked this parted chronicle of my trip to San Diego in my capacity of a notary public from Costa Rica.