We didnât need to file more than once in the end (I was successful first time). But NSM did agree to refile if necessary until I was successful, for a fixed fee.
As part of the court case fee they also assisted me until I got approved / recieved my card (ie advised on updated docs for Biometrics & attend the appointment with me, and ensuring I paid & received a card via their office).
I used another firm to file the initial application & transferred my file to them when I decided to go to court.
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@tkrunning is there any chance we could start a database of which law firm people went with for the lawsuit, and whether their cases were successful or not? And perhaps a field for whether they recommend the law firm or not?
Also, just curious, I saw the email you sent out recommending NSM, do you really think they would be significantly better than IAS, which processed my application? Thereâs only 2 ppl recommending them in this thread, which I do really appreciate, but it would just be nice to have more data
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Nice thought. But what would matter even more are the firms not in the list of recommended? Stay away from them.
And i think even lawyer names should be added.
The issue is the case should be filed by the lawyer who handles your GV, I asked another lawyer in thread and they asked me to talk to my lawyer because of this reason.
I suggest talk to IAS first, otherwise you might need to transfer your GV and it takes time and efforts
Yes, itâs polite to explain why you wish to transfer your business.
And it will involve transferring information (the case file). In my case it didnât take more than 24 once permission was given to the first firm to release to the second. I also received a part rebate of fees from the first firm because I had paid them upfront more than they had spent in man-hours on the task. We parted amicably.
(Of course, if the first firm is unprofessional it could take longerâŠbut who wants to work with that type of firm - if you think they might act in this way?)
We filed a lawsuit through IAS. We obtained the final approval for my spouse but it happened within 2 weeks of the lawsuit so we donât know if it was successful or a coincidence.
They have a thousand GV clients and are filing lawsuits all day. You should ask your lawyer for advice on how to proceed.
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I used NSM for my GV application. Great firm so far. Iâm going to discuss with them the lawsuit action next week to hear their thoughts for those of us not living in PT.
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We applied several years ago before the pandemic. You can find my misfortunes in my old posts.
I will do it in two weeks, as my lawyer is on vacation. Letâs share information here.
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A friend is offering to rent me a room in his house in the Algarve, but his house has no number and the street its on has no name, and thereâs just a âCaixa Postalâ postal box number as the address. Is this unusual? My lawyer was sketched out and said it sounded like something was irregular, and that I should look for another place to rent so it doesnât cause confusion during the lawsuit. Has anybody had experiences with houses without addresses like this? Contrary to my lawyer, my friend who grew up in rural Portugal says that situation is common and laughed at my lawyer saying âHe must be from Lisbonâ
The friend renting the house also said that the house was identified as âArtigo matricial nâ°XXXX, municĂpio e freguesia de Aljezurâ in the Finanças Autoridade TributĂĄria
Try to have Glovo delivery food to the address and see if it gets there.
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In our experience, residential addresses in Portugal can be a horrible mess to foreigners but quite normal to the Portuguese. We bought a ground floor apartment in central Lisbon which was a renovated building. The deeds describe the location of the building (being on the corner of two roads) and the unit as a letter (âGâ if anyoneâs interested). The water company uses the address of the door on the main road because all the water meters are located in the basement there. Meo uses the address of our actual main door on the side road for fibre broadband. And the unit number post box for CTT and deliveries is 1E and not G. So, itâs a right old mess but apparently normal. Thereâs clearly no clean national database of correct residential addresses that is aligned to property deeds.
The main thing is that if youâre renting a room to give yourself a legal address for, say, tax residency purposes then you will need a legal document (a lease registered with the tax authorities) proving this. You cannot have a casual arrangement as you would in many countries. This, I believe, is to stop tax avoidance by landlords. If you need this legal address but are not paying actual rent then thereâs some other document you can get to prove youâre there legally but I donât have experience of this. Anyone?
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Evidently AIMA has a new strategy for dealing with court orders resulting from lawsuits: just ignore them AIMA deixa de obedecer a notificaçÔes judiciais e dificulta mais a vida de imigrantes | Emigração | PĂBLICO
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I wonder if this new âstonewallingâ strategy is the work of the law firm that AIMA engaged over the summer?
Just when you thought this couldnât get more scandalous, AIMA sinks deeper into disrepute - and takes Portugalâs reputation as a place to invest down with it.
It looks like AIMA has absorbed enough tribunal vaccination and now they become immunized with court orders. Now sure if there is more chemical weapon to attack AIMA or AIMA is going to slaughter the court as well as all of its immigrantes.
it works for aima and normal applicationsâŠ
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It could be worse. Try Costa Rica.
Our lawyerâs address is literally â200 meters north of the town square, townnameâ.
Mail gets there because the postal carrier knows who she is.
Everyone else, you ask someone where her office is. Probably ideally the postal carrier if you can find him/her.
This is normal.
And yes there is a clear, concise national registry of land deeds. It just doesnât depend on addresses, apparently. 
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I sat in on a Portugalist webinar yesterday, âHow to Get an AIMA Appointment & Other Moving to Portugal Questions.â
One of the two panelists was a lawyer (Ines Silva). She was very upfront about how fâd the AIMA situation is⊠which was refreshing because usually anything âPortugalâ + âwebinarâ is a sunny sales pitch.
Some of Inesâ points for us GVâers. Of course these are her experiences⊠ymmv:
- The only way sheâs getting appointments for her clients (new and renewal) is via lawsuits
â Given that even expired cards have been extended to end-June 2025 anyway, Renewal court cases need a âmore urgentâ reason to win. If you donât have an urgent reason to renew, itâs better not to sue - AIMAâs now taking 8-10 weeks to schedule appointments after court notifications (or actual court orders) - this used to be a week
- AIMA wasnât replying to the Court earlier. Now the law firm that AIMA hired to defend them at 50âŹ/case typically replies with an appointment date and âDonât rule negatively against us, weâve already offered an appointment.â
â To me this is dangerous: If you donât have an actual Court ruling demanding AIMA do something by a deadline (and perhaps with financial penalties), they can continue to take their sweet time
You only have to watch the first ~15 minutes to hear most of the GV-related discussion. They then went on to D2, D7, etc. for the remainder:
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