How to make a will in Costa Rica, step by step

What a will is, and three features that change everything

A will is the act by which a person disposes of their property for after their death (Civil Code, articles 577 and following). Three features define how it is made.

It is strictly personal. Nobody can make a will on your behalf: not your son with a power of attorney, not your trusted lawyer, not your partner. If you cannot travel, the one who travels is the notary. What cannot be delegated is your will itself.

It is solemn. A paper signed at home is not worth anything, nor is a voice recording, nor a WhatsApp message where you say what you want. The law demands specific forms and, if they are not met, the will is void.

It is revocable. As long as you are alive and of sound mind, you can change it as many times as you like. That takes the pressure off: the will you make today does not tie you down for life.

Requirements for making a will in Costa Rica

There are fewer of them than people think, but not one of them is negotiable.

Capacity: from the age of 15 and of sound mind

The law presumes that any person over fifteen years of age who is of sound mind may make a will (article 591). You do not need to be of legal age, nor to own a large estate, nor to have reached a certain age.

The delicate point is not the age; it is being "of sound mind," because that is exactly what anyone who later wants to fight the will goes after. "Mom was no longer well when she signed" is the most common ground for a challenge. In step 3 we explain how to shield yourself.

The documents you need

• Your valid identification: your Costa Rican ID card (cédula); if you are a foreigner, your DIMEX (foreign resident ID) or your passport.
• The details of your property: the property registry number (folio real) of each piece of real estate, the licence plate of each vehicle, the bank and account number of each account, the shares or quotas you hold in companies. You do not have to bring the original deeds, but you do need the details to identify each asset beyond confusion.
• The details of your heirs and of the executor: the full name and identification number of every person you are going to name.

Three witnesses who are allowed to be witnesses

An open will (testamento abierto) before a notary is executed with three witnesses (article 583). They have to be of legal age, able to read and write, and free of any legal impediment.

Anyone with a direct or indirect interest in the will, such as an heir or a legatee, should not act as an attesting witness. Neither should your spouse, your siblings, your parents, grandparents, children or grandchildren, nor the notary's relatives in those same degrees; the rule reaches relatives by affinity as well.

Using the child who inherits as a witness is the classic mistake. If you do not have three people who qualify, the firm provides them. The full list of who can and who cannot is in Witnesses for a will.

A notary public

The notary public (in Costa Rica, a lawyer-notary) attests to the act: they check your identity and your capacity, conduct the formalities and record the will in their protocol book. Their minimum fee is not something they make up: it is set by the official fee schedule. The breakdown is further down.

Special cases

• If you cannot sign, or do not know how: that is stated in the will itself. Leaving that statement out voids the document (article 585).
• If you are deaf: if you can read, you read the will yourself; if not, you designate someone to read it in your place (article 585).
• If you do not speak Spanish: the law requires two interpreters chosen by you, who translate into Spanish what you are setting out (article 584). This is not a matter of translating a document: they are two more people at the act, subject to the same capacity rules as the witnesses (Notarial Code). You may bring your own, as long as they meet those rules, or the firm provides them.

Step 1 — Map out your situation before you talk to anyone

There is nothing legal about this step, and it is the one that decides the quality of everything else. It is three lists; by hand in a notebook, if that suits you.

What you own. The house, the lot you bought thirty years ago, the car, the accounts, the savings in the solidarista association, the certificate of deposit, the shares of the company that holds the farm. Write down what you remember and then go find the numbers: property registry number, licence plate, account number. An asset badly described in a will is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Who depends on you. Not "who your family is," but who depends on you: a child who cannot support himself, a grandchild you raised, a sister you send money to every month. This matters for a concrete legal reason. In Costa Rica you have broad freedom to distribute your property, but there is the limit of article 595, which protects the support obligation towards whoever depends on you by law. A will that leaves that person unprovided for can be fought. We explain it in depth in Can I leave my inheritance to whoever I want?.

What you want to happen. Who receives what and, this one is always forgotten, what happens if that person dies before you. Also who you are going to name executor (albacea), the person who administers and distributes once you are gone.

Give it a week, without rushing. It is the only step where nobody can fully help you, and it is the one that makes the meeting with the notary last forty minutes instead of three appointments.

If, while you make the list, assets outside the country, a family business or an heir who is a minor turn up, your case is no longer a simple will. We look at that at the end.

Step 2 — Choose the form of the will

The Civil Code offers two ordinary routes.

Open will. You declare your wishes before the notary and the witnesses, and they are recorded in the notary's protocol book. It is the one the great majority of people in Costa Rica use and the one we recommend, except in very specific cases.

Sealed will (testamento cerrado). You hand over your will in a sealed envelope, and what the notary records is the delivery, not the contents. Complete privacy, with a real risk: if the envelope is lost, is damaged or carries a defect of form, nobody will be there to put it right.

The full comparison, with the advantages and the risks of each one, is in Open wills in Costa Rica.

There is a third possibility that almost nobody knows about: article 583 allows an open will to be executed without a notary, before four witnesses if you wrote it out in your own hand, or before six if you did not. It exists in the law. In practice it is a bad idea: gathering six qualified witnesses and meeting every formality of article 585 with no professional conducting the act is a recipe for annulment.

Step 3 — Review the draft: that is where it is decided whether your will holds up

With your lists in hand, the notary drafts. Nobody sees this stage from the outside, and it is where the lawsuit you hope never happens is won or lost.

What has to be written properly:

• The property, without ambiguity. "My house" is not enough if you own two properties. The property registry number goes in.
• The substitutes. If you leave something to your brother and your brother dies before you, does it pass to your nephews or is it shared out among the others? If you do not say so, the law decides.
• The executor, with a stand-in. The person you named may not want to accept, or may not be able to.
• The charges and conditions, if there are any; for example, a lifetime usufruct over the house for your partner.
• The support obligation, when article 595 applies.

There is also a recommendation that is not in the law, but that heads off a good share of the challenges: if you are of advanced age or have a diagnosis that could cast doubt on your lucidity, it is worth bringing a recent medical opinion attesting to your mental capacity close to the date of the signing. It is not a legal requirement and nobody can demand it of you. It is, quite simply, the best shield against the argument that "she was no longer well when she signed."

Read the whole draft, without hurry, and ask about everything you do not understand. A will you do not fully understand is a will that does not reflect your wishes.

Step 4 — Sign before a notary and three witnesses

This is where the law turns strict, and it is worth knowing what is going to happen in that room: it takes less than an hour and it does not happen twice.

Who is present. You, the notary and the three witnesses (article 583). If you wrote the will out in your own hand, two witnesses and the notary are enough.

This confuses even lawyers, because article 585 says that "at least two witnesses" must sign. They are two different things: present, three; signing, at least two. Executing a will before a notary with only two witnesses present breaches articles 583 and 585, and the will is annulled.

The formalities of article 585, in order:

1. The full date: place, day, hour, month and year. The exact time, yes.
2. Reading aloud before the witnesses, done by you, by whoever you designate or by the notary.
3. Signature by you, by the notary and by the witnesses. If you cannot sign, or do not know how, it is stated in the will itself.
4. Everything as a single, uninterrupted act. No interruptions, no "we will carry on in a minute," no witness stepping out to answer the phone and coming back. If the act is broken up, the formality is broken.

If all of that is met, the will is executed. What comes after that no longer depends on you.

Step 5 — After the signing, your will is kept safe

A lot of people believe they walk out of the notary's office with "the will" under their arm and that they have to hide it somewhere safe. It does not work that way, and that is some of the best news in the whole process.

An open will is recorded in the notary's protocol book, an official volume that, once it is filled, is deposited in the Notarial Archive of the National Archive. On top of that, notaries have to file fortnightly indexes of the instruments they authorize and report wills on the form the Notarial Archive keeps for that purpose. The Archive maintains a searchable record of the wills deposited with it.

In plain terms: your will does not get lost even if you keep no paper at all. Your family can find out, afterwards, whether you made a will and before whom. How that search is done is in How to find out whether a person left a will.

You can ask for a certified copy (testimonio), which is an authorized reproduction, and keep it with your important documents so that the family knows it exists. But the original lives in the protocol book, not in your drawer.

Step 6 — Review it from time to time

Your will is revocable as long as you are alive and keep your capacity. It is changed or revoked by executing a new one. When that happens, the notary who authorizes the latest one has to enter a marginal note on the revoked deed, so that there is a trace of which wishes are the ones in force.

When it is worth reviewing it:

• An heir is born or dies.
• You marry, separate or divorce.
• You buy or sell a significant asset, or pay off the mortgage.
• The person you named executor is no longer in a position to serve.
• More than five years have gone by and you have not read it again.

"I already made mine" is a dangerous phrase when the will is fifteen years old and hands out a farm you sold ten years ago. More in Changing or revoking a will.

How long it takes and what it costs

The fee of ₡121.000 is not a made-up price. It is the minimum set by the official fee schedule for the professional services of lawyers and notaries (Executive Decree 41457-JP, article 97), and compliance with it is mandatory.

Optional services:

• Notary at your home: +₡50.000.
• Witnesses provided by the firm: +₡25.000 each.
• Emergency will: +₡50.000.
• Will in English: the fee is the same as for the ordinary will, quoted with reference to US dollars (the exchange rate may move the final amount). To that you have to add the two interpreters the law requires: ₡50.000 + VAT (₡56.500) each. If you bring your own interpreters, that charge does not apply.

The full breakdown, and the comparison with what it costs to inherit without a will, are in How much does it cost to make a will in Costa Rica?.

The five mistakes that bring a will down

1. Witnesses who are not allowed to be witnesses: an heir or a close relative. It is the most common one of all.
2. Fewer witnesses than the law requires: two instead of three before a notary.
3. Breaking the single, uninterrupted act: interrupting the execution of the will and picking it up later.
4. Failing to state that the testator cannot sign, when that is the case.
5. An old will that no longer matches the property or the family you have today.

Notice that not one of them has to do with what you wanted to leave: every one of them is a matter of form. That is why step 4, the one that looks like pure paperwork, is the one that weighs the most.

How it works at testamento.cr

Everything above is the law. This is how we turn it into something you can do without studying law yourself.

You start with a test, not with an appointment. The first step is a self-assessment: a questionnaire that shows you, out of your own answers, where your estate plan stands and what you are missing. It is not a contact form in disguise; by the time you finish it, you know more about your situation than you did before you started.

Then a lawyer calls you. They go over the result with you, tell you whether your case is a simple will or needs something more, and answer whatever you need to ask before you pay anything. The complex cases (minors, assets abroad, doubts about capacity) are spotted right there, not after the money has been collected.

The draft reaches you by email. You read it at home, taking all the time you need, you talk it over with whoever you want and you ask for whatever changes are needed. Nothing is signed in a rush at a counter.

The signing is arranged wherever works for you. It can be at our offices in Barrio Don Bosco, San José, or with the notary travelling out to wherever you are; for many older people, that is the difference between getting it done and going on putting it off. The three witnesses are provided by the firm if you would rather not round them up yourself.

And after that, the document stays where it belongs: in the protocol book, reported to the Notarial Archive, with no paper for you to look after.

And what if your case needs more than a will?

Let us be honest, because hardly anyone is going to tell you this: if you own a house and a couple of bank accounts, a will is all you need. You do not need trusts, or structures, or a planning package. Overspending on this is as bad as doing nothing at all.

There is a line, though, beyond which a will on its own does not solve it:

• You own property in Costa Rica and in another country.
• You own a family business that somebody has to keep running the following Monday.
• You have children who are minors, or a dependent whose property has to be managed for years.
• You want certain assets to stay out of the succession proceedings.

That last point deserves precision, because plenty of smoke gets sold with it. A will does not do away with the succession proceedings, and on its own it does not bring down their base fees or those of the deed of award, which depend on the value of the property.

What can come down, and by a lot, are the costs of a contested succession: the private lawyer each heir brings in, the motions, the objections, the expert appraisals. It also lowers the odds of a dispute and how long it lasts, in the notarial succession proceedings and above all in the judicial ones. Keeping an asset out of the succession takes other tools, and that is already estate planning.

If you do not know which side of the line you are on, the test tells you.

Frequently asked questions