Liberia, Guanacaste

Trespassing and land occupation

Someone has entered, fenced, planted or started building on land that is not theirs.

Who is responsible

Ministerio Público — Fiscalía

Crimes: threats, unlawful occupation of property, disobeying authority (for example, carrying on building despite a closure order), environmental damage.

You must identify yourself

A criminal complaint is filed in person at the Fiscalía or OIJ and is made under oath. It is not a form-filling exercise: if the case is serious, go with a lawyer.

Verified on 2026-08-30

What it rests on

Unlawful occupation is a criminal offence under the Penal Code.

Act fast: time gives the occupier possession arguments, and what a complaint settles today becomes a years-long lawsuit tomorrow.

What to gather before writing

Gather this before you write. A backed complaint gets investigated; an unbacked one gets filed away.

Cadastral plan and deed or title showing who owns the land.
Dated photos of the occupation and of any new fence, planting or building.

Draft the document

It builds as you type. Anything you leave blank stays marked in brackets for you to fill in by hand — a visible [PENDIENTE] beats an invented fact.

Your detailsFull nameCédula, DIMEX or passportAddressEmail for official noticesRequired in practice: it is where the answer arrives and where the ten-day clock runs.PhoneAsk that my details be treated as confidential

The facts

The document you file must be in Spanish. Write the facts below in whichever language you are comfortable with — the AI step further down translates them and gives you a plain-English summary of what you are signing. If you skip that step, write the facts in Spanish or have someone read them over before you send.

Exact location *District, directions and, if you can, a Google Maps or Waze link. “Across from the supermarket” is not enough for an inspector to find it.Adds where you are right now, with a map link. Only use it if you are at the spot — if you are writing from home about works elsewhere, the coordinates would point at your house. As with everything here, they leave your phone only inside the document you send.What is happening *Facts, not opinions. What you saw and heard yourself — not hearsay, not assumptions.Since whenAn approximate date works. “Since March 2026”.What you have already triedCalls, visits, earlier complaints and their reference numbers. This is what later lets you escalate.

Your document

Open in your email

If your email opens truncated or empty, that is a limit of the mail program, not of the document: use “Copy the document” and paste it in by hand.

Want an AI to polish it? Copy the block below and paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or whichever you use. It carries instructions to improve the wording and invent nothing. Check the result before sending: you sign it, you answer for it.

The draft is saved only in this browser. If the phone is shared, clear it when you finish.

Is your case more tangled than this?

It happens often: the noise comes from works that also lack a permit, and the owner turns out to be the same person who blocked your right of way. When three things overlap, a guide organised by category falls short.

This is where a language model — Claude, ChatGPT, whichever — genuinely helps: tell it the whole tangle, out of order, the way you would tell a neighbour, and ask it to separate how many distinct matters there are and who handles each. Then come back here and build one document per matter.

But know how it fails, because it fails in a dangerous way.

These models invent articles, deadlines, decrees and even whole institutions, and they do it in flawless Spanish with great confidence. Turning up at a counter citing a decree that does not exist costs you the case and your credibility, and the person behind the counter will not explain why.

The rule: every institution, law, article or deadline an AI gives you, check it here before you use it. Who does what. If it is not in that directory, treat it as false until you confirm it on the institution’s own page.

And if the tangle involves property, money or someone threatening you, no AI replaces a lawyer. There is free legal help: where to find it.