www.CostaRicaTicas.com

MiaEwr, how about our in-house pro bono lawyer.....NFlorida

B- I don't know how competent his counsel is, nor do I know him personally (his names indicates he hails from north of I-4 while I reside further south), or really much about him other than he perhaps has never been to CR but does not feel it is a necessity to be knowledgable about SJO, CR, and CRT If he is a member of the bar, this could be a good feature if one sought his opinion. No visits would mean no novia and thus he could perhaps be objective.
I also think he may have "reappeared" recently based on responses to his posts.

I used Gringo-hater in my post for a couple of reasons. One , because of the title of the article : Expats risk half their assets with lengthy love nest
By Garland M. Baker
Special to A.M. Costa Rica
... and because the wenches usually stand to gain alot more from us than from the Ticos.

_________________
"With foxes, we must play the fox." ~ Thomas Fuller

Actually, I think the Count might have something there. Sure, the author of the article referred to expats in his title and, true, there is certainly far more often much more money at stake when you're talking about gringo-tica relationships (or gringa-tico, which the author also referenced), but we don't know how much of that is just his spin. The article about the law did appear in an English language newspaper, which is targeted at gringos. It is not farfetched to assume that "news" organization would tailor its content and headlines in such a manner as to grab its particular audience's attention.

Okay we all know that there are cross-cultural relationships that don't work out. We don't know how many of those failed relationships leave the tica (or tico) party holding the short-end of stick rather than just coming to the end of the line for the gravy train. And I doubt that such cases where a tica (or tico) truly gets left without their fair share are so plentiful and egregious that it would require legislative remedy. OTOH, we have all seen the flip side in tico-tica relationships in the form of ticas with multiple bambinos from tico father(s) who don't pay a colone in financial support. Such cases VASTLY out number the cases arising from relationships with gringos. True, one can't get blood from a stone, but it seems much more likely, to me anyway, that the tico "blood", whatever it was they could get, was what they were really after.

The point for all of us, and I believe the ultimate relevance of the article, is that, whomever the law is really primarily targeted at, the law could be, and in fact already has been in some instances, applied to us and that we should be very careful lest we fall into some tica trap.

This was a somewhat interesting article, but don't we already have enough other and much more likely issues to be concerned about.
Personally, based on these laws (which, BTW, I already knew about), I'd never allow myself to live with one novia that I wouldn't want to marry for long enough for a union hecho or union libre status to be applied to us. Short of that, it is hard to imagine a tico court having all that much sympathy for a jilted ex-DR hooker (or current ), who got to live very well for a few months and who can and probably will just go back to a line of work that probably pays better than that of any of the judges or lawyers in the courtroom. But I could just be naive about that. Frankly, I'd be much more fearful of getting some tica knocked up (or even her letting herself get knocked up) and then falling subject to the Ch*ld support laws regardless of how long I lived with the chica or even whether I had ever lived with her at all, than I would about these civil union laws. After all, that could happen even after just one night of togetherness.