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Has anyone ever told you not to throw away your old passport? Probably not. Well, you can throw them all away, except the one(s) that you used to purchase a property in Costa Rica. Crazy eh!
It sounds like a pretty stupid request, doesn’t it! Who wants to keep an old passport that is no good anymore? Let me tell you why.
The deed
When you purchase a property in Costa Rica, the notary public takes your legal ID number to identify you in the deed. If you’re a Costa Rican, the cédula is used, and if you are a legal resident, your cédula de residencia or DIMEX is used.
If you are a tourist or a resident who is not yet legal, you use your passport to purchase a property. Your driver’s license is NOT a valid identification in Costa Rica.
Expiring date
When your passport expires, you will get a new passport with a different number. So when you sell the property, you cannot produce the same identification you used to purchase it. Some buyers’ lawyers will find it acceptable, but most won’t.
Your old passports
Most embassies don’t destroy your old passport when they issue a new one. Mine punches holes in it or cuts a triangle from it.
Some embassies recommend two valid options to destroy your old passport:
1. Shredding your passport so the biometric information page is destroyed.
2. Disposing of your passport safely is burning it in a fireplace
This is fine as long as you didn’t use that old passport to buy property in Costa Rica.
When buying the property
Nowadays, many expats use property purchases to obtain residency as investors. At the time of purchase, the only identification you have is your passport. Once your residency is approved and you receive your DIMEX card, you will have a permanent identification card that will never change.
The Costa Rican way
Until recently, Costa Rican citizens had their passport number match their National Identity Number (cédula). When they purchase a property, they use their cédula number to register ownership.
The identity card number is assigned at the time of birth registration in the Civil Registry, although the physical document is issued upon reaching the age of 18. This numbering, consisting of province, volume, and entry, is formalized after the vital event is registered. You can easily check someone’s name at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Therefore, they have no need to keep the passports that expire every 5 or 10 years. But you, as a foreigner, will have to, unless you use your cedula, or DIMEX (Residence Card) for the purchase.
Cédula
Costa Ricans who turn 18 will receive their first cédula from the Civil Registry. This cédula is an identity card with their most important personal information. The identity card is used for everything they do. The province where the Costa Rican was born is used as the first number in their cédula. If you are foreign-born and you become a Costa Rican citizen, you will obtain a cédula that starts with an 8.
Dimex
The identity card for foreigners is called DIMEX – Documento de Identidad Migratoria para Extranjeros. DIMEX is registered with Immigration, not with the Civil Registry.
When selling your property
The day will come when you will want to sell your property. Maybe that will happen 10 years later, and you will notice that now you have a different passport with a different number.
You will be seen by a Costa Rican notary public as a different person because the passport number doesn’t match. Most closing attorneys, especially those who work for a bank, will not accept your new passport without proof that you are the same person. The best proof is your old passport.
Especially when you sell your property to someone who needs bank financing, this issue can become very important and even cause you to lose the sale.
Solution
If you no longer have your old passport, talk to your lawyer. Hopefully, he/she was the closing lawyer for your purchase, so they are aware of the situation. Check out the following solutions:
1. If the property is in your name, you should appear before a Notary Public to request the change of identification number and then file it in the National Registry.
2. When there is no time to make this change because your closing is within days, you can appear before a notary public, who manifests that you are the same person. This is not always accepted by another closing attorney.
Update your corporation
If you own your property in Costa Rica through a Sociedad Anónima or corporation, you might find that you are registered with an old passport number in that corporation. If that is the case, you first need to ask your lawyer to make the change of your ID number in the National Registry.
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