1) Special power of attorney to allow my partner's brother to take our application to the embassy
For this we needed a scan of his passport but he didn't have a scanner, so we said 'how about a photo?'. But his hard drive was full and he had heaps of photos on his memory card so he couldn't download them to his camera, so he had to go and buy a new one, then he took the picture, downloaded it and emailed it to us. We stuck it on a memory stick and went to the Institute to print it. Then we took it to the lawyer and he wrote up the power of attorney (which I requested in French with the assistance of Babelfish). $40 each and about a two weeks.
2) Application letter
This has to be in Spanish so the lawyer wrote it for us. We had to say why we want to live in Costa Rica and what we are going to do here in French. He didn't charge us for this and we had to wait a day or so.
3) Special power of attorney to representative in Costa Rica
The lawyer drew this up for us too, granting the power to himself. $40 each and was done with the rest.
4) Birth certificate
Applied before leaving the UK and then found that they consider them expired after 6 months and that we wouldn't be able to get all the rest of the paperwork in time so had to get new copies. This can be obtained from the government records office for £10 but I have a feeling we went through a private provider that charged us £25 and I think it took about a week. This also had to be apostillised for another £28.
5) Police certificate
This turned out to be the trickiest bit. Where should we get our police clearance? We'd been in Laos but they don't issue police clearances and it would be difficult to show why we had a Lao clearance when we live in Australia. A Queensland police check is easy to get but difficult to justify when our birth certificates are from UK. To get a UK police clearance you need a UK address, which we fortunately both have since we have accounts there. But if you're not actually there you're meant to do it by post and only do it electronically if you are there (go figure!). Disaster! Mail is way too slow and unreliable with Costa Rica so we just had to try and see if we could do it electronically. After a few nail-biting weeks we finally succeeded though my partner's came back without a signature and had to be sent back taking another week or two. £23 each and then and another £28 for apostillisation.
5) Copy of passport
This had to be a certified which the lawyer did for us. $20 each
6) Form and photos
We went into Santa Elena to the chemists for the photos and had to come back when the owner was there. Taken on a polaroid. $8 each
7) Proof of payment
That will be supplied by the embassy。
8) Embassy registration
Got online, downloaded and taken to a cybercafe for printing. $2 a couple of hours.
9) Proof of income
This had to be supplied by our financial institutions。Mine wrote the letter along the lines of the form letter I had but my partner’s broker baulked， which is funny coz he has much more money than me。But I showed him the letter from my broker and a letter miraculously materialised！This then had to be notarised by a solicitor which meant that my partner's letter had to be sent to Scotland so they could be done together. The solicitor walked to my mum's house in deep snow to do this and only charged us $10 for the first document and $5 for subsequent ones. This then had to go to the Foreign Office to be apostillised. £28 each and about a week.
10）Fingerprint receipt
We had to go to San Jose for this。It was quite straightforward but meant an overnight in a hotel and 10 hours on buses。No charge but $45 each in other costs and two days although this was our second trip to do this as we got the wrong information the first time and were then told to wait till we had everything else.
11) Translation
This had to be done by an official translator here in Costa Rica. We found one who was very efficient via the government web site. The documents to be translated had been scanned and emailed from the UK and the translator found half a page missing so it had to be rescanned and resent from London. The documents had to be mailed to us so it took a week partly because we don't have a reliable postal address so we used the lawyer's PO box and it took him a couple of days to check for it. $130 plus $3 in postage and about 2 weeks.
12) Submission at the embassy
This part hasn't happened yet but we've made the appointment for 18th. They'll charge us $40/document which may only be for the three main documents and £50 for the power of attorney plus a $30 application fee and a £50 postage fee. So about £170-290 depending on how many documents they charge for.
So the total is:
2 PoAs $80
Birth cert £25 = $39
Police clearance £23 = $36
Certifying passport $20
photos $8
Notarising $15
Apostillisation $84
Translation $130
Couriering £50, $45, $3=$126
Embassy fees £200=$312
Total $850
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