Your house in Chile is occupied and you live abroad: what to do

Short answer: there is no single way to recover an occupied house, there are three, and choosing the wrong one costs months. Which applies turns on one question: how the occupier got in. Whether they came in under a contract, with permission but no contract, or by force, those are three different procedures. From outside Chile all of this can be started with a power of attorney, but the title has to be in order first, because the first thing proved in any of the three routes is that you are the owner.

The three routes, and how to tell them apart

This is the question that orders the whole case, and it is worth answering honestly before speaking to anyone.

The most expensive confusion is treating as precario what was a tenancy, or the other way round. They are different procedures, with different courts and different deadlines, and a case brought down the wrong road is not corrected: it is lost and has to be started again.

If there ever was a contract, even a verbal one, the route is the tenancy one. That the contract expired, that the occupier stopped paying years ago or that nothing was ever put in writing does not turn it into precario. Precario assumes there was never any title of any kind, only tolerance.

The first step is not suing, it is the title

All three routes require ownership to be proved, and that is where many cases stop before they start.

If the house is still registered in your deceased parents' names, you are not yet the owner in a court's eyes, however much the family takes it for granted. The inheritance has to be dealt with first, and that is in the guide on the house still in your parents' names.

If the property was never registered in anyone in the family's name, the problem is older and what applies is regularisation of title, which we handle as a service without you travelling. And if it was bought as shares and rights, it is worth reading the guide to shares and rights before suing, because the owner of a share in a large property cannot always sue over the house a third party occupies.

So the real order is this: first the title is checked, then the route is chosen, and only then is the claim brought.

What living outside Chile changes

The procedure is the same. What changes is the logistics, and it is three concrete things.

The litigation mandate

For a lawyer to litigate for you they need a litigation mandate, granted before the Chilean consulate in your city. It is not the same document as a power to sell: it carries powers specific to proceedings, and it is better drafted in Chile with those powers included.

Evidence at a distance

You are not there to show the house, or to explain how the occupier got in, or to establish since when. That has to be assembled from documents: the registration of title, property tax receipts, utility payments, emails or messages showing the relationship with the occupier, and the contract where there is one.

WhatsApp messages or emails in which the occupier acknowledges the house is not theirs tend to be the most valuable thing in the file, and they are precisely what people delete. Keep them before starting any conversation.

Timing and distance

A civil case in Chile has its own timescales and they do not speed up because you live abroad. What you can do is avoid losing time at the beginning, which is where it is lost: by assembling the evidence while the title is being sorted, rather than one after the other.

What not to do

• Cutting off the water or the electricity. It is the natural reaction from a distance and the one that ends worst. We explain it in the guide on cutting off utilities.
• Sending somebody to throw them out. Changing the lock or forcing entry turns the owner into the one who has to explain themselves to a court.
• Offering money with nothing in writing. Negotiating an exit is sometimes right, but without a properly drafted written agreement the payment buys nothing and can be read as recognising a right.
• Letting another year pass. Every year consolidates the factual situation and adds evidence on the other side.

The conversation with the occupier, before proceedings

There is almost always a conversation first, by phone or by message, and from a distance it is almost always handled badly. It is worth thinking through, because what is said there can end up in the file.

First, do not threaten action you will not take, or set deadlines you will not enforce. An ultimatum that passes without consequence teaches the occupier that nothing happens, and that is exactly the reading they will rely on later.

Second, do put two things in writing: that you are the owner, and that the occupation is not authorised by you. One clear message, without insults and without improvised offers, is worth more than ten phone calls.

And third, if an exit is going to be negotiated, negotiate it with a document drafted by a lawyer, not by word of mouth. A properly made agreement fixes a handover date, records that there is no tenancy agreement involved and sets out what happens if it is not honoured. A verbal agreement, by contrast, tends to become the evidence that permission existed.

What happens after you win

A favourable judgment does not empty the house by itself. What comes next has its own timescales and is worth knowing in advance, because it is where people who are far away get frustrated.

• The eviction itself. It is the step in which a court officer attends the property to restore it. It is applied for once the judgment can be enforced and may require the assistance of the police.
• The state the house is left in. Rarely the one you imagine. Plan who will receive it, change the locks the same day and take photographs, because that is what supports any later claim for damage.
• The utility accounts. They are usually unpaid and some follow the property or the account holder. Checking and regularising them straight away stops the problem carrying over to the next stage.
• Rent or compensation. Where there was a contract, what is owed is pursued in the same proceedings or in later ones. Whether it is collectable in practice is a different question, and one worth answering realistically before investing in litigating it.

The cost of waiting another year

From abroad, putting it off is the comfortable option: there is no visible urgency and there is always something more pressing. It is worth seeing what accumulates meanwhile.

Property tax keeps running and the debt follows the property, so the house you want to recover is worth a little less in net terms each year. If the title is not in order, the procedure that will be needed anyway gets dearer with every death in the family. And the occupier accumulates time, which is the main ingredient of any defence they may want to build.

The counterweight is that the initial diagnosis is cheap and done remotely. Knowing where the house stands does not commit you to suing, but it lets you decide with information rather than with the feeling that the problem cannot be tackled.

One point worth being clear about from the start. Recovering the house and recovering what you lost are two different objectives, with different difficulties. The first is achieved in most well run cases. The second depends on the occupier having the means to pay, and often they do not. Decide which of the two matters before you begin.

How we handle this at Terreno en Regla

The first thing is a short conversation to establish how the occupier got in, because everything else depends on it. In parallel we request the certificates showing the state of the title.

If the title is in order, we draft the litigation mandate with the powers the case needs and send it ready to sign at your consulate. If it is not, we sort that first, because suing without proving ownership is losing the case at the door.

Then we run the proceedings before the court for the place where the property lies, and report to you in writing at every stage, which is what you need when you are ten thousand kilometres away. If a problem of title or inheritance appears along the way, we resolve it in parallel.

Frequently asked questions