The steps to take for residency in Costa Rica

*FYI – this information changes all the time. This our experience. Contact a firm or lawyer to make certain you have the most up to date info on Costa Rica residency. 

I just sent the final documents, via courier, to the Washington DC office of the Costa Rican Consulate to get my approval stamps. I had mistakenly visited there back in December 2009 with incomplete documentation and boy howdy was I informed that I had incomplete documentation! I was a tad frustrated then but now I understand all of the things I was missing and how they must get a lot of people who walk in there without knowing the rules of Residency.

Rentista

For the record, we are applying for rentista status. This means that if we can prove that we are not criminals, that we are able to support ourselves for 5 years and get all of the documentation right we are basically in. Getting the documentation right is not hard, just a lot of visits to government offices for stamps/approvals, a bit of cash and a lot of waiting for things to be returned.

All the documents that were required had to be less that 6 months old. This means that the tattered 40 year old birth certificate that I kept in a plastic baggy wouldn’t work. I had to get a new birth certificate from Ohio, where I was born and from N. Dakota, where Barry was born. I was sent a birth certificate for a different Kimberly Ann Beck and when I called they said “Oh, just send that back”. I never sent it back because I refuse to pay the shipping for their mistake so if you are Kimberly Ann Beck, born in Cincinnati on April 1st. I have something for you. The next step was to have the birth certificates certified by the state of origin. This meant sending Barry’s document back to ND & taking mine to Columbus just a short 2 hour drive.

The next document needed was a background check. You must go to your local police department and request one. They take your fingerprints, ask you a few questions and then you wait. For most this isn’t an issue but we had just sold the house and moved to a different state where we didn’t have the 3 years in state to qualify us for the check, so we pretended that we still lived in our old hometown and everything was returned to us without a hitch. Luckily, Barry’s record was clean (if you know Barry you know that this a completely comical comment). This document had to be notarized by the county clerk of whatever county it was processed in and then the county clerk of that county had to add a document stating that the notary was indeed a notary and then all of those added documents had to be confirmed by the state of Ohio.

We also needed our marriage license certified. Normally, a that task would follow the path of the background check BUT we had to go and get married in the Dominican Republic. In all honesty the ceremony was in Spanish so this certification process helped us to confirm that we had actually gotten married and not adopted a family as we had previously pondered. Our marriage license had to be certified by the U.S. Dept. of State because it was a federal document. I first had to get our marriage license re-issued from the Dominican because of the six month rule, translated into English and then send it to the Hillary Clinton’s Authentications office. They had to certify that the guy who signed it was indeed the Dominican Representative to the U.S. at the time of the issuance. This process took the longest. It felt like I would never get it back.

The final document that had to be in order was the bank letter that stated that
we had enough funds to live in Costa Rica for five years and not be a strain on the local economy there. This amount basically doubled in March, 2010 so we had to raise a few more funds than what we thought when we purchased our farm 2 years ago. We drove older vehicles, sold our house and ate rice and beans, but we did it. This document is normally the hardest to get because banks don’t seem to want to write that their client will have this money for a certain period of time. I, luckily, have been doing business with a credit union for 15 or so years and I knew the people by name. This document also had to be notarized, certified by county clerk and the state of Ohio.

Things to remember about Costa Rica residency:
All documents no less that 6 months old
notarized, county clerk certified, State certified and possible U.S. certification
Birth Certificate
Income Certificate
Background Check
Marriage certificate (if applicable)
CR consulate stamps

Fee’s

There is a fee at every step, some as much as $40 per document and it is advised to pay for a courier service that requires a signature delivery and a return envelope that you can track, which is also about $40 per transaction. These fee’s only get your paperwork in order. As soon as we get our documents back from the CR consulate we will need to travel to CR and obtain an attorney to contact immigration for us at a cost of approximately 1K each.

I would have been lost during this process had it not been for Ryan Piercy at ARCR.net or Area Residents of Costa Rica office. The requirements are very specific and without his help I would be frustrated and my documentation would still be incomplete. Thanks Ryan!

Now I wait for the consulate to return my documents so I can book my very last minute, very expensive flight to CR. If we can take care of this now our 3 month road trip will not be interrupted and we will be citizens by the time we arrive.

I almost forgot – YOU CAN JUST HAVE A BABY THERE AND NOT WORRY ABOUT THE MONEY PART!

A video we shot during the process can be found here