|
Weekly
Newsletter So
you want to retire to Panama. Passing of a Loved One Recently, an old and dear friend lost his wife. She had been sick for many years and though he had done everything a man can do to prepare himself for the inevitable, he found himself unprepared for the details of putting her to rest. My friend lived in Boquete in the Chirqui Highlands of Panama, where he moved years ago so his wife would be more comfortable. He asked me to tell my readers of his experience in hope that it might save some other expat some unnecessary pain. Here is his story. When my wife died at 7:00 pm I called the only doctor in Boquete, who arrived at 7:30 pm and pronounced her dead. I went to the local funeral home, but found no one there. The contact number on the door listed the number for a shoe repair shop, and I also got no answer at that number. The doctor attempted to locate someone in Boquete to prepare her body but could not find anyone. He finally located someone in David who agreed to come to Boquete to prepare her, but he had no transportation, so I had to go to David to pick him up and take him to a pharmacy to buy the needed supplies. He also took me to select a casket. After choosing one, I made arrangements to have a hearse transport her to Penonome. Everything, including the $500.00 fee for the hearse, had to be paid in cash. Back in Boquete, I had to assist the mortician, there being no one else to help. It was not an easy thing to do. After driving the mortician back to David I arrived back in Boquete at 2:00 am. The doctor had told me to come to his clinic early that morning to pick up the death certificate, but he wasn't there when I went. I called him on his cell phone and he told me to be there in one hour and he would have the certificate ready. When I returned to the clinic an hour later, he was attending patients and hadn't yet started the paperwork. I guess he saw how angry I was getting, because he rushed to do the paperwork, but only then asked for my wife's cedula number, so I had to call the house to get the number from my sister-in-law. The hearse arrived promptly at 10:00 am, and everything went smoothly until we arrived in Penonome and the hearse driver refused to drive the last stretch of unpaved road to the family home. I was forced to carry her the last distance in the back of a pickup truck. After the funeral, I began the tasks of recording the death, both with Panama's Registro Civil and the US Consulate. Panama wanted two copies of the doctor's certificate and a copy of our marriage certificate, because we were married in Panama. They then issued an official government death certificate. All these certificates required tax stamps of $4.00 to $5.00 per certificate, but since the Registro Civil doesn't sell the stamps, I had to go to a bank to buy them. After closing out my affairs in Boquete, I went to Panama City, where I could report the death of a US citizen abroad to the US Consulate. The Panama Death Certificate had to be translated into English and sealed by a licensed translator. I needed my wife's and my own passports. The following day I returned to the Consulate and was given twenty copies of the Consular report! I discovered that transferring a deceased's property is a time-consuming and expensive affair requiring the services of a lawyer, and everything that passes through a government office has to have tax stamps on it. Here are some suggestions in case you find yourself facing a situation similar to mine. 1. Don't depend on the doctor in Boquete to do what he says he will do. 2. Have lots of cash on hand. Not the mortician, nor the hearse operator, nor the government will accept checks or credit cards. 3. If you have made prior arrangements for a burial plot and can bury the body the day following the death, you can dispense with the mortician's services. 4. If the body is to be buried in another city or sent back to the US for burial, you will be unable to do anything until all the required paperwork is done. I was unable to move my wife without a doctor's death certificate. That's my friend's story and his advice. Now, forgive me, but writing this has been a very emotionally trying experience, so I will not talk about anything else this week. I can't even imagine how painful it must have been for my friend.
|