End of March, almost a year after…
By the end of March, we hope things would pick up speed in Portugal. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Even the new lady lawyer took a week to respond to us. After this period of silence, she sent us documents to sign and return to her. The originals needed to be registered, so we promptly signed and sent everything back the same day. However, the postal service to Portugal took its time, and it wasn’t until two and a half weeks later that we received confirmation the documents had arrived.
Lawyers surprise you
Then comes the lawyer’s surprise: An increase of 50% in the price we have to pay her. Adding to that, she demands immediate payment, threatening not to send the documents otherwise. Looks unacceptable for us. So she wants us to pay upfront without verifying if the work was done properly? Strange. We’ve been transparent and clear from the beginning, but what now? Do we say yes or no? I think she will continue to work as we agreed, backed by Paulo’s support, the real estate man who arranged her.
However, we’re dealing with a different culture here, and my assumptions are incorrect. Paulo doesn’t think this lawyer will resolve things and doesn’t interfere. Perhaps we should move forward without her. Yet, despite our emails, we still haven’t received a power of attorney. It’s now the end of March…
Let’s take care of it ourselves
At this point, we’re considering signing the documents ourselves when we visit. It shouldn’t take much longer. It is true, we did all the things ourselves, so this will not be an exception. We only wanted to speed things up, because the real estate agent insisted. Calma… we will go there in May. The extra weeks don’t seem to matter after the time the municipality took for correcting the papers.
Another surprise from that lawyer
Then, another surprise from the lady lawyer: “The documents are incorrect,” she claims, sending us new ones via the post to sign and return again. This is the perfect moment for us to reconsider our partnership with her. Paulo is displeased and mentions that the owners are becoming impatient. I guess he is the only one being impatient. Actually it is us who have the right to be impatient. We are displeased by being rushed by him and the troubles with his bad choice of lawyer but we are happy that we can sign ourselves with the current owners of the house.
