[Anonymous]

I have had my property up for sale for 6 months now. It is an apartment in benalmadena and i have someone very interested in buying it. My problem is that the property is owned by myself and my husband in joint names and my husband is working in nigeria. He works 3 months on and one off so will not be able to get back to uk or spain for another 10 weeks. The buyer has expressed a desire to buy the property immediately as he needs somewhere and we dont want to miss out on the sale.

Is there any way we can still sell the house with my signiture or can we get a solicitor to witness my husband signing something in nigeria and send it over here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Your husband need to prepare a power of attorney in your solicitors favour or perhaps even your favour not sure of the later. Take the same power of attorney to the Spanish Consulate in Lagos and once attested by them DHL to you.

Thid is what I would have done, I am sure that you will be given other advise as well.

Tip: If you are preparing the power of attorney in your solicitors favour. Please do not prepare a general power of attorney instead a specific power of attorney.

Good luck

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I read your message with interiest as I have experienced similar difficulties with a client recently. When dealing with Power of Attorney generally speaking two options exist – the first entails using the Hague Apostille to recognise a document legalised in another country. Unfortunately, Nigeria is on my understanding not a signatury to the Convention and as such this cannot be adopted.

One is therefore left with legalising a Power of Attorney at the either the Consulate or Embassy. Below are the relevant details of these in Nigeria:

Embajada de España en Abuja
Plot 611, Bobo Close, Off Ghana St. Maitama, Abuja
Tel: 413 70 91/92/93 Fax: 413 70 95

Consulado General de España en Lagos
21C Kojo Abayomi Road, Victoria Island, GPO Box 2738 Lagos
Tel: 261 52 15 / 261 49 18 /261 60 83

From experience an appointment must be made and whilst some are used to preparing such documents others in certain more remote locations (we had one case in Nepal) can be very slow. As such, it is best to make relevant enquiries as a matter of urgency.

The actual Power itself should be drafted according to the particular circumstances (eg. cancellation of a mortgage loan if applicable) and unless you feel that it will be required at a later date it is wise to limit its terms rather than drafting it in a general manner. It can be prudent to grant Power of Attorney to more than one person but where possible the original should be retained by you and only released / presented when specifically required – being returned immediately thereafter. If Power of Attorney is granted to more than one person ensure that each individual can act in their own right.

Finally, it goes without saying that it is wise to make every effort to ensure that the Power of Attorney contains the full correct details of each individual. That is to say that it reflects their actual NIF Nº / Passport Nº / Address / Full name etc. as the last thing that anyone would want is to find that a signing was frustrated by the fact that the Power of Attorney contained the wrong passport number and this can easily in more difficult circumstances such as these.

[Author]

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