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If you own a home or spend most of your year in Costa Rica, a local will is the difference between a smooth handover and heirs stuck in probate for years. Here is how inheritance actually works here.
Costa Rica is unusual for the region. You can leave your property to whomever you choose, with almost no forced-heirship rules telling you which relative gets what. That is the good news.
The catch is what happens after you die. Costa Rican law governs any real estate, bank account, or company shares you hold here, no matter what your will back home says. Die without a local plan, and your family can spend years and a real slice of the estate untangling it through a Costa Rican court.
This guide walks through all of it: how inheritance works, whether you need a Costa Rican will, what to put in it, how probate runs, the corporation structure most expats use to skip it, and what it costs.
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Key Takeaways
- Costa Rica has no inheritance tax and no estate tax. Heirs pay only the cost of probate and the transfer stamps to move assets into their names.
- You can leave your Costa Rican assets to whomever you choose. Article 595 of the Civil Code gives broad testamentary freedom, and the only real limit is a maintenance duty to dependents.
- Your home-country will is valid here but cannot be acted on until a Costa Rican court recognizes it through the exequatur process, which adds months. A separate local will avoids that.
- Die without a will and your estate is split between your spouse and children under intestate rules, all of it through a court.
- Court probate is mandatory whenever real estate, a dispute, or a minor heir is involved, and it can drag on for years. Notarial probate finishes in weeks, but only for clean, uncontested estates.
- Many expats hold property in an S.A. or S.R.L. corporation so succession passes by transferring shares instead of re-titling land. The company carries annual tax and reporting obligations in return.
- Attorney fees for probate follow a regulated scale tied to the estate’s value: roughly US$13,900 on a US$200,000 estate, on top of transfer stamps and appraisal costs.
Why You Need a Costa Rican Will
You need a Costa Rican will if you own property here, hold a Costa Rican bank account or company, or spend most of your time in the country. A will drafted here and limited to your local assets is the single cheapest thing you can do to spare your heirs the worst of the process.
The reason is jurisdiction. A house, a car, a bank account, or shares in a Costa Rican corporation are all governed by Costa Rican law when you die. Your will from the United States, Canada, or Europe does not automatically control them, and it cannot be executed here without a court first recognizing it (more on that below).
Without any local instructions, your assets pass by the default rules of intestate succession, and the whole thing runs through a court.
Community Input: In the expat forums, the one piece of advice that comes up again and again is to sort a local will before you need it. The people warning you are usually the ones who watched a friend’s estate drag on.
What Happens If You Die Without a Will
If you die without a will (intestate), Costa Rican law divides your estate proportionately between your legal spouse and your children. This is the default the courts apply, and it leaves you no say over who gets what.
When there is no spouse or children, the estate moves down a statutory order to parents, then other relatives, and finally to the state if no heir can be found. Establishing who qualifies is where it gets slow. Heirs have to prove the relationship with documents.
For a foreign family, that means marriage certificates and children’s birth certificates, each one apostilled in the home country and translated into Spanish before a Costa Rican court will accept it. If any heir is a minor, the court brings in the child-welfare agency (PANI) to protect the child’s interest, which adds another layer and more time.
Tip: Gather and apostille your family documents while everyone is alive and available. Tracking down and legalizing a foreign marriage certificate after a death, from another country, is exactly the kind of delay that stretches probate out.
How Costa Rica Is Different: Testamentary Freedom
Costa Rica gives you broad freedom to leave your assets to whomever you want, which sets it apart from most civil-law countries where fixed shares are reserved for children and spouses. Article 595 of the Civil Code is the basis for this, and it means you are not forced to split your estate by formula.
There is one real limit. If you owed maintenance to a dependent (a minor child, a disabled family member, a spouse or parents who genuinely need support), the law expects your will to provide for that obligation, known as pensión alimentaria. This is a maintenance duty, not a reserved percentage of the estate.
So do not build your plan on the assumption that each child automatically owns a fixed slice, the way they would in Spain, France, or much of Latin America. In Costa Rica the will controls, read alongside those maintenance protections.
Making a Costa Rican Will
A valid Costa Rican will has to be drafted through a notario público and signed before witnesses. A Costa Rican notary is a lawyer with special authority to create public documents, not the low-level clerk the word means in some countries, so this is a legal step, not a formality.
Open Will Versus Closed Will
Costa Rica recognizes two main forms. Most expats use the open will.
- Open will (testamento abierto): dictated to and recorded by the notary in front of witnesses, with the contents known to those present. This is the common, straightforward choice.
- Closed will (testamento cerrado): the contents stay sealed and private, handed to the notary in a closed envelope with witnesses attesting to the act rather than the contents. Less common and more procedural.
The Notary and Witnesses
A standard will needs the notary plus witnesses, and the requirement grows if you do not speak Spanish. A testator who cannot understand Spanish needs five witnesses: three regular witnesses plus two who can act as translators, so that everyone can confirm the will reflects what you actually intended.
The document is written in Spanish. If Spanish is not your language, use a notary who is genuinely bilingual and walk through every clause, because you are the one signing off that it says what you mean.
What to Include in Your Will
A Costa Rican will should cover every asset you hold in the country and name who handles the estate. Walk through each type of asset with your notary so nothing is left to the default rules.
Real Estate and Land
Property is the reason most expats make a will in the first place. Describe each property by its National Registry number (número de finca) so there is no ambiguity about what passes to whom. Real estate always pulls the estate into court probate rather than the faster notarial route, which is why many owners hold property through a corporation instead (see below).
Shares in a Costa Rican Corporation
If you hold property or a business through a Costa Rican corporation (an S.A. or S.R.L.), what you actually own is the shares, and it is the shares your will passes on. This distinction matters, because transferring shares can be far simpler than re-titling the underlying property.
Bank Accounts
Costa Rican bank accounts do not pass automatically to a spouse or a co-signer on death. Name where the funds should go. Be aware that banks freeze accounts once they learn the holder has died, so a surviving spouse who relied on that account can be cut off until the estate is settled.
Vehicles and Other Property
Cars, boats, and other registered property transfer through the estate too, and a vehicle carries its own transfer tax when re-registered. List anything of value so it is covered.
Overseas Assets
Keep your Costa Rican will limited to Costa Rican assets. Your home-country assets should be handled by a will in that country. This is the cleanest way to avoid one will accidentally interfering with the other, which is a genuine trap covered under foreign wills below.
Executor
Name an executor (albacea) you trust to manage the estate through the process. Someone based in Costa Rica, or at least able to deal with Costa Rican courts and paperwork, saves your heirs from managing a foreign legal system from abroad.
Funeral Wishes
You can state funeral and burial preferences in the will, but wills are often read well after the funeral. If you have specific wishes, tell the people close to you directly rather than relying on the document to deliver them in time.
Doing It Yourself Versus Using a Lawyer
There is no real do-it-yourself route here. Because the will must be executed before a notary to be valid, you are working with a legal professional either way. A good lawyer earns the fee by making sure your assets are described correctly, your executor is named, and your Costa Rican will does not accidentally clash with your home-country one.
Probate in Costa Rica (Proceso Sucesorio)
Probate in Costa Rica, the proceso sucesorio, is the legal process that transfers a deceased person’s assets to their heirs, and it runs one of two ways: through a court or through a notary. Which one you get depends on how clean the estate is.
Court Probate
Court probate (juicio de sucesión) is mandatory whenever there is no will, the will is contested, there are minor or incapacitated heirs, or real estate is involved. It starts with a filing in civil court and moves through notifying interested parties, inventorying and appraising the assets, paying the deceased’s debts, and finally distributing what is left. Because so many expat estates include property, this is the route many end up in. It is slow, often running from several months to years.
Notarial Probate
Notarial probate (sucesorio notarial) is the faster route, handled by a notary rather than a court, and it is available only when the estate is uncontested, all heirs are adults of sound mind, and everyone agrees on the split. When it works, it can be done in weeks rather than years. The moment there is a dispute or a minor heir, it goes back to court.
In the expat forums, probate is described in blunt terms: expensive, and measured in years, not months. That reputation is why the corporation structure below is so widely used.
Holding Property in a Corporation (S.A. or S.R.L.)
Many expats hold their Costa Rican real estate inside a corporation specifically so that succession happens by transferring shares rather than by dragging the property through probate. When the property belongs to the company and you own the company, passing on the shares can hand over control without re-titling the land at the Registry.
The appeal is real. It can sidestep the court process and the delays that come with it. But it is not a free pass, and the version you hear about in casual forum threads glosses over the obligations.
- Ongoing obligations: a corporation owes an annual corporate tax, must keep legal books, and has to file the beneficial-ownership declaration (the Registro de Transparencia y Beneficiarios Finales) every year. Miss these and the company racks up penalties.
- The “endorsed shares in a drawer” trick: some owners keep undated, signed-over share certificates in a safe for an heir to complete on death. It is common advice in the forums, but it is legally shaky, easy to challenge, and not something to lean on without a lawyer structuring it properly.
Holding property in a company can be a smart succession tool, but treat it as a structure to set up correctly with a lawyer, not a loophole you improvise. It still needs a plan for who inherits the shares, which loops back to your will.
Foreign Wills and the Exequatur Process
A foreign will is valid in Costa Rica, but it cannot be acted on until a Costa Rican court recognizes the foreign proceeding through a process called exequatur, filed before the First Chamber of the Supreme Court. This is the step that turns a will made abroad into something local courts and the Registry will honor.
The process includes publishing notice for thirty days and waiting for the Supreme Court to rule. If it approves, it sends the matter down to a lower civil court to carry out. The court only recognizes the foreign judgment as-is; it will not amend or reinterpret it, so the foreign proceeding should clearly identify the Costa Rican assets and name someone to handle them.
All of this takes time and money on top of the probate itself, which is why lawyers so consistently recommend a separate Costa Rican will for local assets. In the forums, relying on a home-country will alone gets the same warning. It leaves your heirs facing the slow route, sometimes as slow as having no will at all.
Tip: If you keep both a home-country will and a Costa Rican one, have a lawyer check the revocation clauses. A standard “this revokes all prior wills” line in one document can wipe out the other. Each will should be worded to cover only its own country’s assets.
Costs and Taxes
Costa Rica charges no inheritance tax and no estate tax, so heirs do not pay a tax simply for inheriting. (Verified September 2026.) What the estate does pay is the cost of the process itself: legal fees, registry stamps, and the transfer costs to move assets into the heirs’ names.
Legal and Notary Fees
Attorney and notary fees for probate follow a regulated fee scale tied to the value of the estate, so a bigger estate means a bigger bill.
As a rough guide, one Costa Rican legal source puts attorney fees on a US$200,000 estate at around US$13,900. Treat that as an order of magnitude rather than a quote, because the exact figure depends on the estate, the lawyer, and how the current fee schedule is applied. (Verified September 2026.)
Transfer Taxes and Stamps
Moving inherited assets into the heirs’ names carries the same transfer costs as any transfer at the Registry:
- a property transfer tax of 1.5% plus registration stamps, and 2.5% for a vehicle. (Verified September 2026.)
- Whether the 1.5% transfer tax applies in full to an inheritance adjudication (rather than a sale) is a documented gray area, so confirm the exact treatment with your lawyer for your situation.
Add appraisal fees on top, which run in the range of 1% to 4% depending on the asset. None of this is an inheritance tax, but together it is a real cost, and it is one more reason a clean local will and a sensible ownership structure pay for themselves.
Costa Rica does apply an annual property tax and, on higher-value homes, a luxury-home tax, but those are ongoing ownership costs, not death taxes.
Living Will and Advance Directive (Voluntad Anticipada)
Costa Rica now lets you set out your end-of-life medical wishes in advance through a living will, under Law 10,231, the Ley de Voluntades Anticipadas. It lets someone with legal capacity state in writing which medical interventions they do or do not want if they later cannot communicate, and the law is explicit that this is not euthanasia.
For a long-term resident, this belongs alongside the will and any power of attorney. A related tool is a healthcare power of attorney, naming someone to make medical decisions for you. Note that access to care itself depends on your coverage. Expats not enrolled in the public system (CCSS) fall back on private insurance or paying out of pocket for palliative and end-of-life care.
Common Mistakes and Pitfalls
Most estate problems in Costa Rica come from having no local plan, not from anything exotic. A few patterns show up over and over.
- Relying on a home-country will alone: it forces heirs through the exequatur process on top of probate. A separate Costa Rican will avoids that.
- No will at all: intestate succession sends everything to court, with foreign documents to apostille and translate before anyone can inherit.
- Improvising the corporation trick: undated endorsed shares stuffed in a drawer feel clever until they are challenged. Structure it properly or not at all.
- Two wills that cancel each other: a revocation clause in one can void the other. Have them drafted to stay in their own lanes.
- Waiting until after you buy property: the moment you hold a Costa Rican asset is the moment the plan matters. Make the will part of the purchase, not a someday task.
Should You Make a Costa Rican Will?
If you own property, hold local accounts or a company, or spend most of the year in Costa Rica, yes. Make a Costa Rican will, and do it before you think you need one. The cost of drafting one is small next to the years and fees a court probate can cost your family.
If you have no assets in the country and are just passing through, it matters far less. For everyone in between, the honest answer is to sit down with a Costa Rican lawyer, describe what you own and who you want it to go to, and let them tell you whether a will alone is enough or whether a corporation structure fits your situation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Costa Rica have an inheritance or estate tax?
No. Costa Rica charges neither an inheritance tax nor an estate tax. Heirs pay the costs of the probate process and the transfer stamps to move assets into their names, but there is no tax for inheriting itself.
Will my US, Canadian, or European will work in Costa Rica?
It is valid, but it cannot be executed here until a Costa Rican court recognizes it through the exequatur process before the Supreme Court, which adds time and cost. Most lawyers recommend a separate Costa Rican will covering only your local assets.
Does a foreign spouse automatically inherit my Costa Rican property?
Not automatically. Without a will, the estate is split proportionately between spouse and children under intestate rules, and the transfer still runs through probate. A will lets you direct who receives what.
How long does probate take in Costa Rica?
Notarial probate, used only for clean, uncontested estates with adult heirs, can finish in weeks. Court probate, which is mandatory whenever real estate or a dispute or a minor heir is involved, commonly takes from several months to years.
Can I avoid probate by holding property in a company?
Often, yes. If the property belongs to a corporation and you own the shares, succession can happen by transferring shares instead of re-titling the property. It comes with annual corporate obligations, so set it up with a lawyer rather than improvising.
Do I still need a will if I am married to a Costa Rican?
Yes. Marriage does not remove the probate process or hand assets over automatically, and a will spares your spouse the slower, court-driven default. It also lets you provide clearly for children from any relationship.
Sources Cited
- Costa Rica Civil Code (Código Civil), Article 595: basis for testamentary freedom and the maintenance (pensión alimentaria) limit.
- CostaRicaLaw.com (Roger Petersen), Wills and Estates: will requirements, witnesses, court vs notarial probate, foreign-will exequatur, and indicative probate costs.
- Arancel de honorarios por servicios profesionales de Abogacía y Notariado (Decreto Ejecutivo 41457-JP): the regulated attorney and notary fee scale for probate.
- Law 10,231, Ley de Voluntades Anticipadas: Costa Rica’s advance-directive / living-will law.
- Ley No. 6999, Impuesto sobre Traspasos de Bienes Inmuebles: the 1.5% property transfer tax.
