The abuse of Costa Rica's domestic violence laws is touching everyone, even senior expats. One 72-year-old man — who is blind in one eye — was thrown out of a home last week in a theatrical production put on by his wife's daughter from another relationship. The man's wife wants the house they once shared.
The event — the so-called domestic violence — was staged. It was a complete fabrication. However, that did not matter to the police. The man was thrown out of the house with nowhere to go.
Here is the incredible story:
Around a year and half ago, the older man began putting his affairs in order because of this advanced age. He and his wife had separated, and he was living in one of the two houses they had. The expat has assisted his wife to obtain training that would support her for the rest of her life.
In Costa Rica, as in many other places in the world, assets are divided equally in a divorce. He did not want a divorce. He was happy with the separation. Not only that, but he just wanted to live out his days in the house to which he had become accustomed. He decided to ask his wife for a usufruct, an occupancy right, and went to an attorney to begin drawing up the papers. When the lawyer began compiling the information, which included doing some simple due diligence, something surprising popped up. The man's wife was in the process of divorcing him. He had no idea this was the case. She was also in the process of trying to evict him from the house he was living in because she was claiming it was part of her assets when they got married.
Upon learning his wife was in the process of divorcing him, the man filed a divorce claim too, so he would be protected and hopefully suspend the eviction process.
Last Thursday, they both had an audience scheduled in court. The expat had always attended every hearing up to that day, but for some reason he decided to ask his attorney to represent him without his attendance. He said he stayed home to sleep in. Around 7 a.m. or so, he heard banging and drilling. He thought it was his next-door neighbor working on their house, so he decided to stay in bed and put up with the noise. After a short while, the noise was so loud he decided to go next door and complain. The expat's house had an inner living room area and an outer patio that at one time was a carport.
When he opened the inner door separating the two areas, he was shocked. Two men had forced their way into the patio area. The daughter had moved in boxes of her things and spread them around the room. She did not think the expat was home. He was supposed to be in court. So, when she saw him, she was startled for a moment but started screaming at the top of her lungs, he said.
No one really knows which call brought the police. It is suspected that the police arrived as a result of a call made by someone involved in the farce. The police prepared a report based on the woman's testimony that she and her child were being abused by the expat. Once the police report was finish, and they left, she packed up her stuff and left too. She went directly to domestic violence court serving her area and showed all the paperwork to a judge to get an order to kick the expat out of the house. This although she was not living in the dwelling.
The older man called another lawyer for help because the original one was in court for the scheduled hearing. The lawyer, a woman, knew what was next because of her experience with the law. She got in her car and went to the house with two witnesses to wait for the arrival of the police that would throw the man out of the dwelling.
The woman lawyer tried everything possible to explain to the authorities the whole situation was a show and not real. It was an event arranged to get the man out of the house. They said they could do nothing. They had to execute the order of the domestic violence judge.
During the hour that the man had to accumulate his personal items, the policewomen in the group of police officers — they had special badges indicating they were specialists in domestic violence — told the attorney this case was very common. They said they have been in other fabricated situations where a woman was using the domestic violence laws to get her husband out of the house while the woman had her boyfriend waiting for her to return to bed.
The conclusion of everything that happened on Thursday is simple. The daughter of a Costa Rican woman bent the country's laws on domestic violence to evict the man. The wife had not lived in the home or two years.
When the man went to the criminal court to file a complaint, the woman attendant looked at him and said in Spanish, “I do not know what to accuse your wife's daughter of, throwing you out of the house is not illegal. Maybe I can put, she broke your locks on the doors, and you suffered damage that way.”
The expat's hearing is Tuesday. He will get his say, if the court can supply a translator, which they probably will not do because the judicial system is very scarce on translators these days. His hearing will most likely be postponed. Even if eventually he could get the place back, he would not move back in. He is afraid.
Article first published in A.M. Costa Rica on March 2, 2009.
