My family will be going to Costa Rica in a few months. There is a girl about my daughter’s age (14 years old) who may go with us.
Is there going to be a problem? Will I have difficulty taking a minor with me if I am not her legal guardian?
Consult a lawyer versed in International Law or the specifics of custody in Costa Rica. My guess is that you will be OK if you carry a notarized document from her legal guardians (parents or other) authorizing her to travel with you, you to be responsible in loco parentis and entitled to authorize medical care if needed, etc. It would probably be wise to have duplicates of this in English and literal-translation Spanish prepared and signed and notarized. But IANAL, I don’t know the specifics of what international travel with an unrelated minor entails, and you need to be sure in a case like this.
I don’t know what the laws are in Costa Rica, but last year my husband took our son and his best friend, both minors in high school, to Europe for the summer. My husband got a notarized statement (in English, German and French) from the other boy’s parents to the effect that my husband was *in loco parentis * for the duration of the trip and could, as required, authorize medical treatment and hire legal counsel for the boy. Fortunately, the kid neither fell ill nor got arrested, but if it something had gone wrong, the document would have cut through a lot of red tape and prevented delays while medical personnel or legal authorities tried to reach the kid’s parents back in the states.
When my French class went to Canada our teacher made our parents’ sign papers saying they consented to her taking us out of the country. Noting about medical care and we didn’t have to get them notarized.
Sounds like an interesting story, newcrasher. If you don’t mind my asking, who’s the girl and how come she’s going to accompany you to Costa Rica?
Oops, message deleted - it was a duplicate.
I’m not newcrasher but when I was a teenaged only child, my parents always invited one of my friends along on our vacations, even out of the country a few times.
This was back in the late 80s but my parents always had the other parents write and sign a letter saying they authorized my parents to obtain medical care, etc. It was never a problem but, like I said, this was back in the stone age.
Our church works with a small church down there in a poor neighborhood outside of San Jose. We will be down there visiting friends and setting things up for a trip from my church later in the year.
This girl has really been impacted by the stories of this small church that dies its best to feed a neighborhood of orphans. She wants to go and her mom approves.
Hell…when my family went to Canada for my graduation they deposed my sister because she wasn’t of legal age yet. My mother has full custody, always has, and they STILL threatened to not let her off in Canada unless my dad faxed a signed permission. 
My sister did just that last summer, taking her daughter and a friend (both 16) from the US to Germany. She called the airline, and was advised to get the notarized thing mentioned above.
She said that there were no problems and the issue never came up. Just an anecdotal point.
In the film “Babel,” when the two Mexican nationals attempted to re-enter the US with the two small children of the employer of one of them, they were asked to see a letter of consent from their parents. That sounds like a good thing to have.
What a lovely story! She sounds like a nice kid.
You should be aware that because of the problems caused by non-custodial parent abductions if you are travelling with your own minor child and without the other parent you may be asked to demonstrate that you are legally able to do so. I know Mexican law requires notorized written permission from any parent not travelling with the child.
Ah, but your teacher already has authority to look after children at the school. So they only need to extend that authority for the School trip.
I just travelled with my 10-year-old niece to Mexico last summer. I had a notarized letter from her parents. It was only a very minor issue when coming back to the US! The agent at the immigration station stopped and asked me why our last names were different. I explained that she was my niece and that was that.
I have the opposite story: I know of a woman who travelled with her 11 yr old neice who had a different last name. They had trouble leaving New York—the authorities there gave the two of them an unpleasant questioning. They took them into separate rooms, and the girl became very, very scared at being separated from her aunt and held in a room by uniformed strangers.
Moral of the story—check VERY carefully with official legal authority before you travel.