Squatters and Possession Claims in Costa Rica

The clock starts the day they arrive

Almost everything about removing people from land in Costa Rica depends on how long they have been there. The remedies that are fast are only available early, and the remedies that remain later are slow. Owners who live abroad routinely find out months after the fact, and by then the cheap options have closed.

The first question is never whether you own the land. It is what date the occupation began, and what you can prove about that date.

Occupants are not tenants

Article 7 of the Ley General de Arrendamientos Urbanos y Suburbanos, Ley 7527, expressly excludes simple ocupacion precaria from the tenancy law. That matters, because it means a squatter is not evicted through the desahucio process that applies to a tenant who stops paying. Different facts, different law, different route. Trying to force the tenancy process onto an occupation that was never a lease is a common way to lose time you do not have.

The administrative route, while the invasion is still in progress

Administrative eviction is handled by the Ministerio de Seguridad Publica under Decreto Ejecutivo 37262-MSP. It is designed for an invasion in progress rather than a settled occupation, and institutional practice reflects that: the IMAS procedures manual, for example, applies its administrative eviction track only where no more than two calendar weeks have passed.

You will see a ninety-day administrative window quoted on foreign-facing websites. We have not been able to source that figure to any official text, and we will not repeat it. The safe instruction is the honest one: this is a matter of days, not months. If people have moved onto your land, the call happens that week.

One further thing to expect. The CAID, created by Decreto 39277, screens evictions where social vulnerability is involved. Where an occupation has consolidated and families are living on the land, that screening is a real factor in how quickly anything happens.

The three interdictos, and the three-month wall

An interdicto is the fast possessory remedy. It does not decide who owns the land. It decides who gets to possess it while the ownership question waits.

Two things about interdictos are commonly reported wrong, including by law firm websites. The first is how many there are. The Codigo Procesal Civil, Ley 9342, reduced them to three:

• Interdicto de amparo de posesion, where you are being disturbed but still hold the land
• Interdicto de restitucion, where you have been put off it
• Interdicto de reposicion de linderos, where the boundary markers have been moved

Suspension of new works and demolition still exist as processes, but they are no longer interdictos under the current code.

The second, and the expensive one, is the deadline. Article 106.1 is explicit: no interdicto may be brought once three months have passed since the start of the acts or works complained of. Three months, and it runs from when the acts began, not from when you found out. An owner who discovers an occupation in month four has already lost this remedy.

There is a separate one-year period in this area, and conflating the two is exactly how the mistake gets made. The year is not a filing window. It is what the claimant has to prove about their own possession before the interdicto will work.

Article 106.1 also shuts the interdicto out where the disturbance comes from a judicial or administrative decision. If a public body put someone on that land, this is not the route.

After three months: the reivindicatoria

Once the interdicto window closes, the remaining civil action is the accion reivindicatoria under article 316 of the Codigo Civil, which gives every owner the right to reclaim the thing they own and the free enjoyment of the rights that come with it.

It asks the court to decide ownership rather than possession, and it runs as an ordinary proceeding, which means slower and more expensive than an interdicto by a wide margin. Three things have to be established: that you are the registered owner, that the person on the land is an illegitimate possessor, and that the land you own is identifiably the land they are on. That third element is where these cases are actually won and lost, and it is a survey question before it is a legal one.

The part that should worry rural owners

Most foreign owners have heard that adverse possession against a registered title is close to impossible in Costa Rica. For the ordinary civil route that is broadly right. The Sala Primera has held that civil usucapion requires a justo titulo traslativo de dominio together with good faith and ten years, and has rejected the argument that a transfer of possessory rights counts as that just title. Somebody who simply occupied land has neither.

There is a second route, and it is the one that matters here. Article 92 of the Ley de Tierras y Colonizacion, Ley 2825, creates usucapion especial agraria. It defines the poseedor en precario as someone who, out of necessity, carries out stable and effective acts of possession as an owner, peacefully, publicly and without interruption for more than a year. After ten years of that possession, they may register title. It applies expressly where the land is registered in the name of a third party, and it dispenses with both good faith and just title, substituting productive working of the land.

So the reassuring version is true of a lot in town and false of a farm. Rural land that sits unvisited and unworked, with someone living on it and farming it, is the exposure. That is a Guanacaste and Nicoya problem more than a San Jose one, and it is the single thing we would want an absentee owner to understand.

Which court hears it

Where the land is agricultural, these matters go to the agrarian courts rather than the civil ones. The Ley de Jurisdiccion Agraria, Ley 6734, covers reivindicatory and possessory suits involving workers of the land, interdictos over rural property and desahucios on rural land, and the Codigo Procesal Agrario, Ley 9609, sets out an agrarian competence covering possession, deslinde, division, localizacion de derechos, demolition, suspension of works, titling, rectification of measurement and physical delivery.

The test the agrarian courts apply is the activity carried out on the land, whether as the main activity or one connected to it. It is not a formality. The jurisdiction changes the procedure, the judge and the way possession is weighed, and filing in the wrong one costs months.

What we would want on the first call

The date the occupation started and how you can evidence it. The folio real and the plano catastrado. Photographs, ideally dated. Whether anyone has been paying anything to anyone. Whether the land is worked, and by whom. Whether there was ever any agreement, however informal, with anyone now on the property. That last one changes the case completely, and people often forget a conversation from years earlier that the other side has not forgotten at all.

What we handle in possession matters

• Administrative eviction while an invasion is in progress
• Interdicto de amparo de posesion and de restitucion inside the three-month window
• Accion reivindicatoria where the possessory window has closed
• Defence against a usucapion especial agraria claim
• Agrarian possession and titling disputes in the Nicoya and Liberia courts
• Boundary and marker interference as a possessory claim
• Caretaker and guardian arrangements that turned into occupation claims
• Registry and survey work to establish the identity of the land
• Precautionary measures to stop an occupation consolidating
• Removal of structures built on land that is not the builder’s
• Advice for absentee owners on monitoring and documenting unoccupied land
• Purchase due diligence where a property already has occupants

Common questions about squatters and possession

Squatters have moved onto my land. What happens first?

Establish the date the occupation began and gather what proves it, then move immediately. The administrative route through the Ministerio de Seguridad Publica is built for an invasion in progress, and institutional practice works on a horizon of about two weeks. The possessory court remedies close three months after the acts began. Waiting is the one thing that reliably makes this worse.

Is it true they get the land after a year?

No, and the year is the most misquoted figure in this area. A year is part of what a claimant must prove about their own possession. The period that lets a precarista register title over land registered to somebody else is ten years, under article 92 of Ley 2825. Separately, three months is the deadline for the owner to bring an interdicto.

Can someone really take title to land that is registered in my name?

Through the ordinary civil route, realistically no: it requires a just title and good faith, which an occupier does not have. Through usucapion especial agraria it is possible, because article 92 of Ley 2825 applies expressly to land registered to a third party and dispenses with good faith and just title. Working farmland left unattended is the real exposure.

I live abroad and only visit once a year. What should I be doing?

Have somebody you trust look at the property on a schedule and send you dated photographs. Keep the boundary visible and the land in evident use. Keep the folio real and the plano somewhere you can reach them quickly. The remedies here are cheap and fast in the first weeks and neither of those things later, so the value of finding out early is very high.

The occupants say a previous owner let them stay. Does that matter?

Yes, a great deal, and it is worth telling us early rather than late. A permission, even an informal or verbal one, changes the character of the possession and therefore which remedy applies. These arrangements surface constantly with caretakers, former workers and neighbours who were allowed to graze or plant.

Will this go to the civil court or the agrarian court?

It depends on the activity carried out on the land. Where the property is agricultural, the agrarian courts hear it, under Ley 6734 and the Codigo Procesal Agrario, Ley 9609. That changes procedure, judge and how possession is weighed, so it is settled at the outset rather than discovered later.

Related pages

• Agrarian law and land possession
• Boundary and property-line disputes
• Eviction and tenants in default
• How litigation works in Costa Rica

Informacion general, no constituye asesoria legal. / General information, not legal advice. Case accounts on this site are anonymized and published with consent. Past results do not guarantee a future outcome.