Power of Attorney - How to do it?

theguzman wrote: »

Me and Fiancee are getting married, My fiancee is from Brazil, we are planning to marry there in Brazil in January.

The process of getting married there is bureaucratic to say the least, anyway we both need to give a 30 day notice period for getting married, (It is 3 months in Ireland for example).

To avoid either one very long duration visit for me or else multiple trips to Brazil I can appoint power of attorney to my Fiancee's father to represent me at the local registry office there. My Fiancee will be over there for 14 weeks over Christmas and I will join her after Christmas and we will marry then.

How do I appoint her father as power of attorney? According to the Embassy of Brazil
I just need to get a document drawn up by a Notary Public and my own solicitor is not on the list of notary publics it appears.

Basically I would like to give power of attorney to him for say a 2 month period to specifically handle this one task. Power of attorney is something I usually associate with old folks suffering from dementia etc. and their adult children managing their affairs due to their incapacitation.

I have never had much dealings with the legal profession other than buying my house and my solicitor was so good and easy to deal with, but I don't know if this is within her scope now.

Also finally what might something like this cost me? We have both decided not to marry in Ireland due to costs here and my preferred choice was Las Vegas due to zero bureaucracy and avoidance of an Irish overpriced wedding.

I had written a lot of stuff, but I noticed you are an Irish resident/national without any Brazilian ID (it would have been very easy and cheap if you did). You also have not written in which state of Brazil you are going to marry (costs change widely depending on the state).


All the info can be found here at the bottom of the page:
http://dublin.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-br/procuracao_publica.xml
Google translate it.
The most IMPORTANT BIT is that the civil registry (in Brazil they are private!) where you are going to marry provides a template [modelo] of the power of attorney and then your fiancee translates it to English. Otherwise you can do the opposite, take the Brazilian embassy template: https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Dublin/pt-br/file/Casamento%20Civil.docx

You then have to:
- fill in the template with the missing data and email to a Notary public of your choice (I know a few in Dublin)

- go in person to the Notary Public to sign the ("Power of Attorney"); It used to cost € 10,00 per signature/document in 2019

- Request an apostille at the Department of Foreign Affairs €40:
https://www.dfa.ie/travel/our-services/authenticating-documents/
- post it to Brazil to your fiancee family who will take it to a Sworn Translator [tradutor juramentado] approved by the local Chamber of Commerce, for example in São Paulo state the official list with contact numbers and languages is this one: http://www.institucional.jucesp.sp.gov.br/downloads/lista_tradutores_e_interpretes.pdf
prices of translation here (approx R$ 50 per page): http://www.institucional.jucesp.sp.gov.br/downloads/Deliberacao_012017.pdf

- once your fiancee relative with the power of attorney has the official translation, they will take it to the civil registry of your choice to start the "habilitação" process and pay the fees for the marriage in advance which for São Paulo state you can find here (R$ 414 + 5% tax butit varies a LOT by State):
https://infographya.com/files/Tabela_de_Custas_2020_(sem_ISS).pdf


BIG WARNING: THE MAIN STEP IS FOR THE RELATIVE TO GO TO THE CIVIL REGISTRY OF YOUR CHOICE IN BRAZIL AND ASK FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE DOCUMENTS THEY WANT, THE POWER OF ATTORNEY TEMPLATE AND PRESENT A PRINTOUT OF THE BRAZILIAN EMBASSY WEB PAGE I LINKED ABOVE. Many times the employees in small towns have never gone through the process for a foreigner!


The whole process will take time and you should start it at least 3 months before the date of marriage. Also read very carefully this page:
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth_family_relationships/getting_married/getting_married_abroad.html


If I remember well the civil registry in Brazill for a non resident will require an Irish "Certificate of Freedom to Marry" which will then have to be apostilled and translated as well (in the same manner as above) and maybe a birth certificate apostilled and translated as well. That is why the MAIN STEP above is the most important.


Good luck and happy married life!:)

theguzman wrote: »

Thank you so much for this information, it is really of enormous help, the template part was what I was missing and I was about contact my solicitor to draw something up. We will be getting married in Sao Bernardo do Campo which is a part of Metropolitan Sao Paulo, so hopefully they will have more experience than a rural location as you say.

I would have preferred to marry in Las Vegas or even Gibraltar but both are like flag of conveniences for marriage and I am sure the INIS would take a dim view on it after when she applies for her residency with me next year.

If you could PM the notary in Dublin that does it for €10 per page I would appreciated it. I was quoted €50 per page already but one Notary.

Any Commissioner for Oaths in Dublin will charge 10 euros per signature per statement (Rules of the Superior Courts (Fees payable to Commissioners for Oaths) (SI 616 of 2003), please check:

http://www.irishnotarypublic.ie/commissioner-for-oaths/
http://www.irishnotarypublic.ie/notary-services/new-page-2/
Now the fees might be different if you ask them to draw the power of attorney, but as I told you in previous post and the link above, the Irish Notary SHOULD NOT DRAW the power of attorney (just verify legal capacity and signature), I would strongly suggest that your request to the "Registro Cívil" in São Bernardo do Campo where you are going to get married to provide a template for the "procuração", then your fiancee or an English translator can translate it into English and provide it to the Irish Notary. In this way the translated power of attorney will adhere as much as possible (unfortunately there will be a loss in translation) to Brazil law and civil registry requirements for a power of attorney.


Please look at the steps that the two Civil Registries of São Bernanrdo do Campo require for a non resident foreigner[estrangeiro] to get married:
https://www.1cartoriosbc.com.br/registro_civil/casamento/
https://www.2cartoriosbc.com.br/#requerimentos
If you do not speak Portuguese I would ask your fiancee to help you translate and understand all the steps (they are many steps).
You will need your birth certificate and the "Certificate of Freedom to Marry" apostilled, translated in Brazil and registered at the local Documents Registry (check the time limits for the issuance of these documents with them, they might only accept certificates that are not older than 6 months). Also this list is only valid if you were never married before, otherwise the list is different.

I'm Irish and got married to a Brazilian almost 3 years ago in Goiás. I won't advise on the process as there's a lot I don't remember exactly but I'll give you some tips.

For background, I actually gave up on the power of attorney way as the cartório kept rejecting it even though I paid for everything to be done and translated etc so we ended up just flying over and staying for longer and getting the date in person ourselves. In the cartório we went to we only had to give 20 days notice so it wasn't so bad. When I was there, the staff spent hours double and triple checking the documents (literally about 3 hours checking the same documents letter by letter for mistakes) and getting other staff members to do the same, but this was because I was the first foreigner to get married there. I've had some Irish friends get married in São Paulo and they had no problem with this because the staff were used to foreigners.

Tips:
• Get a complete list of all documents from the place you will be getting married but don't trust it 100%. If they don't include something that you think may be important get it translated and apostille stamped and bring it just in case.
• Where you are getting married will usually have a template on how they want the power of attorney done so follow that as best you can. It depends on how strict the place you get married in is. As I mentioned, the cartório I went to rejected it more than once but my friend just copy and pasted it from google translate with loads of grammar mistakes and where he got married in São Paulo accepted it lol
• You will need to get a CPF Number. Sometimes the cartório will forget to tell you this as they assume everyone has one. You can get a temporary CPF number from the Brazilian embassy in Dublin. Email them and they will go through the process but you will have to post your passport to them and they post it back so account for this in timing it correctly. Also make sure your CPF number won't expire before you go through the process of getting your wedding date.
• You will need to know small things like your parents' birthdays, this is important as it's printed on the long form of your marriage certificate (but not the short form) - seems it's common in Brazil for parents' birthdays to be used on government documents.
• If you translate your marriage certificate into English in Brazil you will need to get the translation and original Portuguese document apostille stamped before coming back to Ireland. This is what we did and we had to basically argue with the staff in the cartório as they refused at first to apostille stamp the English translation. I work in a law firm in Ireland so I knew this was wrong and finally the manager came down and confirmed with the staff that they have to apostille stamp it as it was done by an accredited Brazilian translator (hopefully in São Paulo you won't have this problem!). I've been told if you get it translated in Ireland you won't need to get the translation apostille stamped but it may be a problem at the airport if your wife's visa has expired and is coming back in but I can't confirm this so we got it translated in Brazil just in case.
• I recommend you book a few extra days stay in Brazil just in case you run into any problems because it gets more difficult to sort if you have to come back to Ireland before it's sorted but maybe the Embassy here can help sort some of it out but I'm not sure as we did everything in Brazil before coming back to Ireland.

Also, the power of attorney you're talking about with elderly people getting their adult children to manage their affairs is called an "enduring power of attorney" rather than just a power of attorney and is a different process to go through.

Best of luck and I hope everything goes well for you!