In June 2021, a U.S. citizen signed a reciprocal purchase-option agreement with a seller in Guanacaste for a lot of roughly two thousand square meters, to be carved out of a larger property in Sardinal, Carrillo. The seller was acting as executor (“albacea”) of his late father’s estate, the registered owner of the land. The price was twenty-five thousand dollars. Our client paid it in full that same day, by international wire transfer.
The problem surfaced later. When our client tried to move forward with construction permits, he found the property could not be registered in his name. A title search revealed an administrative warning and a freeze on the property due to inconsistency (“inmovilización”), a legal hold, caused by an overlap between that property’s survey plan and a neighboring one, tracing back to a cartographic error made more than three decades earlier. That freeze was recorded months after the contract was signed, so our client had no way of knowing about it at the time of purchase.
Our client tried to resolve things directly with the seller. The seller acknowledged the situation in a sworn statement before a notary, admitting he was pursuing his own lawsuit against a family member to clear up the duplicate registration, and authorizing our client to possess, fence, and make use of the land in the meantime. He later proposed swapping it for a different property, one that also was not registered in his name, plus an additional payment of twenty thousand dollars or more. After weighing the risks, our client turned that proposal down.
Our client never became the owner of the land he had paid for in full. And when he passed away in January 2023, with the matter still unresolved, that unpaid debt became part of his estate, turning into his brother’s fight.
What the law says, and what we did
In Costa Rica, Article 1049 of the Civil Code provides that a sale is complete between the parties as soon as they agree on the item and the price. That means that, from the moment of signing, the seller takes on the obligation to guarantee the actual transfer of the property and the absence of any legal obstacle to its use or disposal, an obligation that, in this case, went entirely unmet.
Once a purchase-sale contract has been perfected, the party who has complied is entitled to demand from the party who has not, either rescission of the contract or its fulfillment, plus compensation for damages.
Commercial Code, Article 463
Before a lawsuit could even be filed, a separate matter had to be resolved first: since our original client had died without ever receiving the transfer, his rights to that money and to the promised land passed to his brother, who had to be formally declared sole and universal heir through a notarial probate proceeding carried out in Costa Rica. Only once that process was complete could the brother, as the new holder of those rights, file the breach-of-contract claim, seeking rescission of the contract, the return of the twenty-five thousand dollars, and reimbursement of the legal, technical, and travel expenses generated throughout the process.
The court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor on every point of the claim. It declared the purchase-sale contract rescinded due to the seller’s breach and ordered him to return the twenty-five thousand dollars paid, plus the corresponding legal interest; to reimburse the legal, technical, and travel expenses generated throughout the process; and to pay the costs of the suit.
The brother recovered not just the original twenty-five thousand dollars, but every expense his family had taken on trying to salvage that purchase, closing out, with a final judgment, a chapter his brother was never able to resolve in his lifetime.
Why we’re telling this story
Signing a contract and paying right away does not, by itself, guarantee the property will actually become yours. Before paying a single dollar for a lot in Guanacaste, it is worth confirming the property’s registry and cadastral status, including whether its survey plan matches the real boundaries and whether there is any conflict with neighboring properties, because a decades-old mapping error can surface after the contract is signed and leave the property legally frozen.
This case also carries a less obvious lesson: a person’s rights and claims do not disappear when they pass away. When someone dies without resolving a contract dispute, those rights pass to their heirs, but before those heirs can exercise them, the corresponding probate process has to be completed first, often with connections across more than one country.
At Libre Verdad, we support foreigners with legal and registry due diligence before they buy property, with resolving breached contracts, and with the probate proceedings sometimes needed before an inherited right can actually be enforced. If you bought a property and something does not add up, or if you are dealing with an estate that has pending assets or claims in Costa Rica, we are glad to review your case.
Confidentiality Notice: This story is based on a real case handled by Libre Verdad. To protect the privacy of those involved and comply with our professional duty of confidentiality, the names, certain facts, and some identifying details have been changed. Any resemblance to identifiable individuals is solely for illustrative purposes.
Información general, no constituye asesoría legal. / General information, not legal advice.
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