The best way to manage your property
A Trust is an agreement whereby you charge an individual––the Trustee–– with carrying out certain instructions to the benefit of a third party. These instructions may involve all sorts of assets, i.e. property, money, or soft assets such as rights. The force of a trust is such that in certain cases––i.e. testamentary trusts–– the agreement remains in force after the death of the person who gave the instructions.
A Trust is an agreement whereby you charge an individual––the Trustee–– with carrying out certain instructions to the benefit of a third party. These instructions may involve all sorts of assets, i.e. property, money, or soft assets such as rights. The force of a trust is such that in certain cases––i.e. testamentary trusts–– the agreement remains in force after the death of the person who gave the instructions. The Trustee is forced to comply with the instructions strictly and faithfully, and may only modify the use of the assets entrusted with the consent of the person who gave the instructions. The Trustee may not interpret the instructions as originally given. Assets received by way of a Trust are not regarded as part of the Trustee’s own assets, and should be accounted for and managed separately from the Trustee’s assets or other trusts, so that under no circumstance affecting the Trustee may the assets held in trust be transferred. Likewise, no circumstances affecting you or the beneficiary may cause detriment to the trust property. Gomez Law is a Fiduciary Company with a solid international backing, providing a range of fiduciary financial solutions to your needs and managed by professionals with a well-known international background, duly incorporated as Lawyers into the Costa Rican Bar Association and Notaries with studies at both; a Master’s Degree and PhD level in Business Administration, Economics, Banking, and Finances.
All of your assets (be them Real Estate, vehicles/movables or simple rights) have a “property title” that defines you as their “owner”. We will set up a Trust that will include the assets that integrate a “patrimony-in-Trust” – be it over Real Estate, movables, corporate stocks and/or quotas, bonds, securities and other similar instruments -, not only providing you with your titles´ protection through a solid and experienced Trust Company.
Administration Trust
Other associated benefits that this legal structure provides for you are a considerable simplification of the sales process (when and if you decide to sell a particular asset), a comprehensive “tax protection” (especially with regards to the “Capital Gains Tax”) and the solution to the hereditary problems that may arise when you die.
GUARANTEE TRUST
This is used in order to secure an investment or a loan. In a Guarantee Trust, ownership of the assets you are given as collateral for a transaction is transferred to Gomez Law as trust property. In turn, such assets will be returned to the debtor once the debt is paid in accordance with the loan agreement. Otherwise, they will be sold in order to pay you, or eventually will be transferred to you. This way you will avoid being involved in time-consuming, costly legal proceedings and instead will obtain dramatically faster response times than you would in court. The mortgage foreclosure proceeding may last up to one year, while in the Guarantee Trust it may last only two months. In addition, in the foreclosure proceeding the lawyer’s fees and proceedings will add to a minimum of 13%, whereas in the Guarantee Trust they will only add to 6.25%.
Testamentary trust
When a person dies without leaving a will, his heirs must start a process to demonstrate their family bonds and distribute the goods among all relatives according to Law. Even when such a will exists a procedure is required––either in court or before a Notary Public –– resulting in high costs to complete the procedure so that heirs may receive their share of the estate.
If you are not a Costa Rican citizen, the procedure must be carried out in your country of origin, and then the ruling is executed in our country as a prerequisite to distributing the estate. The process to distribute the assets among your heirs will take at least two / three years and will cost roughly 30% of the value of the assets, not counting the federal and state taxes that your heirs will have to pay. A testamentary trust with us will be six times cheaper than the legal process and twenty times faster.