Transcript of the above video: 

Yeah, I am not big on making these kind of videos where it gets into, there seems to be an almost cottage industry in Thailand of like YouTubers and various other social media content creators who make these videos that seem on the one hand kind of disparaging towards Thai women and very cynical insofar as it almost presents it as if all Thai women are just all out to get you and get your money and lay a man low and leave him when he is down or take everything he has got and run off or whatever, but again there is almost a cottage industry of like people that are just churning out these, "I lost everything to a Thai ex-girlfriend" or Thai ex-wife", or whatever videos and that is not the purpose of this one. 

I kind of wanted to make this video because I saw some content recently that various people have sent me and I think just kind of clearing the air on this is probably a good idea. So one, understand, if you are not in a legal relationship, if you are not married to someone then - and I am not saying get married necessarily, go rushing into a marriage that may not necessarily be warranted - but understand, Thailand is not a litigious society. The legal system here is not designed in an adversarial way as basically the Common Law System is where basically the thinking is you put two people at odds with each other in a Courtroom trial proceeding and the truth will out as it were. No, it is more inquisitorial in Thailand, and it is designed effectively to try to diffuse confrontation and conflict rather than exacerbate it. So that is one thing to understand. So the notion of you just sue everybody over here is kind of ridiculous and in fact as many foreigners have often found out here, suing someone actually can put you into a detrimental position yourself for a variety of different reasons; again, it is going to be based on the underlying facts in a given case. 

Now that said, and the thing to take away from this video and understand is again, your context, your fact pattern may actually warrant suing someone who may have defrauded you or something of that nature. I am not exactly talking about outright fraud in this video, although sometimes the line between someone defrauding you and a true romance that went awry or went wrong or went sour, can be difficult to ascertain, so again, if you really feel like there may be some fraud element there, it may not be a bad idea to contact a legal professional. That said, perhaps also listen to the rest of this video.

You are going to have a pretty hard time proving up in Court in Thailand or really anywhere else in the world, although in Thailand I think it is doubly so because again no, the Courts are not stacked against foreigners. It's more the paradigm of jurisprudence and Court practice in Thailand is different again as I have said, than that of the West especially the Common Law Tradition which takes an adversarial approach to trial proceedings. Thailand takes an inquisitorial approach and much more a conflict diffusion approach rather than a conflict exacerbation approach to sort of “find the truth”. And this is the point to this video that you need to understand. The Courts are not there to try and find somebody at fault and then award somebody else a bunch of money; that's not their purpose per se. They may do that if the circumstances and the law applied warrants it, but they are not there to do that sort of as a matter of course, okay. So when folks come here and they end up in a relationship and you hear the stories, "I bought her a motorbike" or "I bought her a car" - it's usually a her - or "I bought her a house", and then - houses and real estate there may be fact patterns there where there may be some recompense, depending on the underlying circumstances - but for the most part if something was given freely as a gift you are going to have a very difficult time in any kind of legal proceeding, claiming some sort of ability to get recompense for that gift; a gift is a gift by definition. So that's the thing to understand and especially where there is no marital relationship in play legally and understand unlike the Common Law tradition, there is no notion of “Common Law” marriage in Thailand - you are either married or not - you have gone through the Civil Law formalities and gotten legally married or you have not, and if you haven't, again things that are given simply as a gift freely in Thailand you are going to have a hard time sort of "clawing" that back if you will.

So again, I find a lot of guys end up spinning their wheels and frankly not really to their own benefit, and it seems like a lot of them get on YouTube and these other websites and forums and things and sort of commiserate with others who have been through similar things. And I get doing that especially in the immediate aftermath and you have gone through something that is kind of emotionally traumatic or whatever, but understand, if you are trying to seek back money that was given initially as a gift to someone who you had a genuine romantic relationship with, you are going to have a hard time seeing any kind of Court action that is going to lead any kind of positive conclusion for you if you are trying to get money back. It's going to be an uphill battle at best. 

Again, it is fact dependent, but a gift freely given in a relationship that was genuine that just happens to go sour, well that is just kind of the way that it works and there is not really a remedy that a Court in Thailand or frankly much of anywhere else is going to be able to apply.