What grounds our Costa Rican civil-law AI
Every statement our system makes about proceso civil traces to a specific article of a specific law, checked against the official consolidated text — not to a model's best guess. This page shows the map, the corrections that were made along the way, and how to check it yourself.
Quick background
Costa Rica's civil litigation system runs on the Código Procesal Civil, enacted as Ley N.º 9342 and in force since October 8, 2018. It replaced the country's older, largely written procedure with an oral, hearing-driven model (proceso por audiencias): claims move through defined hearings — audiencia preliminar, audiencia complementaria, audiencia única — rather than a long exchange of written briefs. Libro Segundo of Ley 9342 sorts every civil dispute into a small number of procedural tracks, each with its own rules for how a claim starts, how the other side responds, how evidence is heard, and how a judgment gets enforced.
For an AI legal assistant, "grounding" means something specific: a statute citation should trace to a verified article of the official consolidated text, not to a model's general training — which can produce a plausible-sounding article number that is simply wrong. Costa Rican statutes get renumbered and re-consolidated over time, and a civil procedure code is exactly the instrument where "Article 107" can mean something entirely different from what an outdated summary assumes.
This page describes source grounding, not legal advice. It tells you what our system reads and how thoroughly that reading has been checked against the primary source — including two places where our own earlier mapping was wrong and had to be corrected. It does not tell you how the law applies to your facts. Nothing here substitutes for review by a licensed Costa Rican attorney.
Source alignments, by process
Proceso Monitorio
Libro II · Título I · Cap. III — Arts. 110–112| Art. | Content |
|---|---|
| 110 | Disposiciones generales — resolución intimatoria and a 5-day window to oppose (110.2); allanamiento (110.3); conversion to ordinario if the opposition is well-founded (110.4) |
| 111 | Monitorio dinerario — qualifying títulos ejecutivos (111.2); taxative opposition grounds: falsedad, falta de exigibilidad, pago, prescripción (111.4) |
| 112 | Monitorio arrendaticio — landlord-tenant sub-route, integrating rules from desahucio sumario |
An earlier draft assumed Arts. 113–115 covered the intimatoria/oposición/título ejecutorio sequence and that Art. 116 was the arrendaticio provision. The verified SINALEVI text shows Arts. 113–114 are the separate proceso incidental, Art. 115 opens proceso sucesorio, and the arrendaticio sub-route is Art. 112 — not 116. Monitorio's procedural substance sits entirely inside Arts. 110–112.
Related law: Ley 7527 (arrendamientos urbanos) Art. 71 — no renovación; Ley 7933 (condominio) Arts. 20, 23 — condominium-fee claims; Código de Comercio títulos ejecutivos — factura (Arts. 460, 460 bis, 460 ter), pagaré (Cap. II, ≈Art. 799+) as the "documento base" for a monitorio dinerario claim.
Proceso Ordinario
Libro II · Título I · Cap. I — Arts. 101–102 + Libro I cross-refsAn earlier draft assumed Arts. 103–109 were ordinario stages (admisibilidad, emplazamiento, audiencias) and that Art. 107 was réplica. The verified text shows Arts. 103–109 are, in full, the Proceso Sumario chapter ( desahucio, interdictos, jactancia…), and Art. 107 governs suspensión de obra nueva — an entire statutory chapter had been attributed to the wrong process. A related fix: Arts. 117–119, once assumed to be ordinario's audiencia complementaria/sentencia block, are confirmed sucesorio articles.
Related law: Código Civil obligaciones (Arts. 628–692) and contratos (Art. 693+) as the substantive basis for most ordinario incumplimiento claims; responsabilidad civil (Art. 1045+) for tort-type claims litigated through this track.
Proceso Sumario
Libro II · Título I · Cap. II — Arts. 103–109| Art. | Sub-route |
|---|---|
| 103 | Disposiciones generales — taxative catalog (103.1); 5-day contestación (103.2); audiencia única culminating in sentencia (103.3); conversion to ordinario if outside catalog (103.4) |
| 104 | Desahucio — cross-referenced with monitorio arrendaticio, Art. 112.3 |
| 105 | Reajuste de precio de arrendamiento, with provisional rent and retroactive effects |
| 106 | Interdictos posesorios — amparo de posesión, restitución, reposición de linderos |
| 107 | Suspensión de obra nueva — stop-work order; immediate execution on estimatory judgment |
| 108 | Derribo — forced demolition; immediate execution on grave and imminent risk |
| 109 | Jactancia — compel a public claimant to sue within 15 days or renounce the claim |
Arts. 103–109 could not be checked against SCIJ's standard "full consolidated text" view — it truncates before Art. 100. Each article in this range was instead pulled individually via SCIJ's per-article endpoint (2026-07-02) and cross-checked against the known consolidated version stamp ("3 de 3 del 06/05/2022"), precisely because this range is where the earlier draft's errors concentrated.
(1) Whether the 5-day Art. 103.2 contestación deadline counts business or calendar days is unverified against the code's general deadline rules. (2) The scope of casación for sumario judgments is likewise flagged unverified. Neither should be treated as resolved.
Related law: the desahucio sub-route (Art. 104) cross-references Ley 7527 Art. 71 (no renovación) and links to monitorio arrendaticio at Art. 112.3.
Proceso Sucesorio
Libro II · Título II — Arts. 115–135| Art. | Stage |
|---|---|
| 115–116 | Procedencia; prueba de fallecimiento |
| 126 | Apertura del proceso — requisitos, 15-day emplazamiento |
| 127 | Declaratoria de herederos — revisable before distribution if a stronger claim surfaces |
| 128 | Inventario y avalúo — albacea has 15 days |
| 129 | Constatación y cancelación del pasivo (creditor claims) |
| 124–125, 130 | Administración del haber — albacea appointment, honorarios, rendición de cuentas |
| 133 | Partición, aprobación, protocolización, entrega |
Conditional stages activate only when the relevant facts arise: medidas cautelares (117), apertura y comprobación de testamentos (118), prejudicialidad (120), acumulación de procesos (121), intervención PGR/PANI where there are no known heirs (122), remoción del albacea (131, routed to incidental), bienes sujetos a régimen especial (132), reapertura or a causante domiciled abroad (134–135).
The earlier draft's errors were concentrated here: parts of Arts. 115–135 had been attributed to ordinario (117–119) and to ejecución (120–135 broadly, including Art. 129 as "obligaciones de hacer/no hacer" and Art. 125 as "avalúo"). The verified SINALEVI text confirms all of Arts. 115–135 belongs to sucesorio; ejecución's actual hacer/no hacer provisions are Arts. 148–150, and its avalúo/remate sequence is Arts. 157–165 — a fully separate numeric range.
Contested sub-disputes inside an otherwise voluntary sucesorio — an opposition to a claimed debt under Art. 129.2, or an opposition under Art. 123 — route to proceso incidental (Arts. 113–114), not to Título IV's proceso no contencioso (Arts. 177–182), despite that title's name. No direct cross-reference from Arts. 115–135 to Arts. 177–182 exists in the consolidated text.
Related law: Código Civil, Libro IV (≈Art. 565+) — testamentos, legítima, partición — as the substantive succession law underlying these procedural articles.
Proceso de Ejecución
Libro II · Título III — Arts. 136–176| Cap. | Arts. | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| I | 136–140 | Inicio, allanamiento, imposibilidad, imputación de pagos, adecuación de vía |
| II | 141–145 | Ejecución provisional (dineraria / no dineraria), typically pending appeal |
| III | 146–152 | Liquidación; obligaciones de dar/hacer/no hacer; embargo |
| IV | 153–165 | Ejecución por suma líquida — embargo (154), remate (159), aprobación (163), liquidación (164) |
| V | 166–171 | Ejecución hipotecaria y prendaria — títulos, demanda, oposición |
| VI | 172–176 | Tercerías — dominio, preferencia, pago inside another's execution |
Two articles in this range carry the source spec's highest confidence tag — independently spot-confirmed rather than inferred: Art. 159 (remate) and Art. 166 (ejecución hipotecaria/prendaria — títulos). HIGH
The earlier draft assumed ejecución began around Art. 120 (despacho, embargo, avalúo), with Art. 125 as "avalúo" and Art. 129 as "obligaciones de hacer/no hacer." SINALEVI's consolidated text shows that entire span (120–135) is sucesorio — ejecución actually begins at Art. 136, its avalúo/remate sequence runs Arts. 157–165, and its hacer/no hacer provisions are Arts. 148–150.
Related law: Código de Comercio títulos valores — letra de cambio (Cap. I, ≈Arts. 760–798), pagaré (Cap. II, ≈Art. 799+), endoso (Arts. 700–709); Código Civil prescripción (Arts. 855–882) as a recurring ground raised in opposition to execution.
How the five tracks connect
- →A contested monitorio claim (debate under Art. 110.4, or an arrendaticio dispute under Art. 112.3) proceeds under sumario rules (Art. 104).
- →A sumario claim outside the taxative catalog converts to ordinario (Art. 103.4).
- →A final judgment in either ordinario or sumario moves into ejecución (Art. 136 onward).
- →Disputes surfacing inside a sucesorio (Art. 123, or a pasivo opposition under 129.2) route to proceso incidental (Arts. 113–114) — referenced here for context, not yet independently modeled for citation.
How to verify this yourself
We'd rather an expert reader check our work than take it on faith. Everything above traces to the Sistema Nacional de Legislación Vigente (SINALEVI), published through Costa Rica's Procuraduría General de la República at pgrweb.go.cr/scij. For Ley 9342 specifically: full consolidated text under SCIJ normativa search, law number 9342 (internal id nValor2=81360) — currently 185 articles plus 6 transitorios, version stamped "3 de 3 del 06/05/2022."
A known SCIJ quirk: the "texto completo" view of Ley 9342 truncates before Art. 100, so the sumario (103–109) and sucesorio (115–135) ranges above were verified article-by-article through SCIJ's per-article page rather than the bulk view — worth knowing if the bulk page looks incomplete when you spot-check it.
What "verified" means here, precisely:
Provisional mapping, not yet independently confirmed.
Checked article-by-article against the official consolidated text — the level of the corrections documented above.
Independently spot-confirmed, used sparingly — e.g. Art. 159 remate, Art. 166 ejecución hipotecaria.
Reviewed and signed off by a licensed Costa Rican attorney for user-facing legal citation.
The article-to-process mapping on this page has reached SINALEVI_VERIFIED — checked against the official consolidated statutory text, with the corrections above as evidence of that process. It has not yet reached ATTORNEY_VERIFIED, a deliberate, separate gate before any of this is presented as a citable legal conclusion for your specific matter. If you're a practicing attorney and something here doesn't match your own reading of the consolidated text, we want to hear about it.
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