Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Wills. "Probate" is in quotation marks in this video. This is something I should have made clear in the past and I don't think I have made it very clear; maybe I have in some videos. But they don't actually use the term probate in the Thai Civil Law vernacular with regard to processing a Will through the Thai Court System for purposes of having the terms of said document executed for practical purposes. So again, handing over property etc., they don't use the term probate; succession is probably the better term in that sort of context. Now that being said, jumping to the main point of this video which is bank accounts, Wills and Probate in Thailand.

Yeah, this is something that comes up rather frequently where you'll have a foreign national who effectively their only asset in Thailand is their bank account and in situations - especially where that bank account may have a substantial amount of money - that account, it may be worthwhile to go ahead and have to deal with Court processing in order to get access to the account because that is what's necessary. Now if there's a Will out there that stipulates who the beneficiary is of all the property or more specifically to a specific Bank Account, then yeah again you're going to process that through the Courts and then the Courts are going to say "okay we're going to go ahead and allow for execution of that"; they'll go ahead and appoint the Executor - that may or may not be the beneficiary depending on the terms of the Will - and then that Executor can go ahead and make the arrangements for that Bank Account to be transferred over. But yeah, Bank Accounts and Condos generally speaking are the main assets that you will see foreigners maintain here in the Kingdom of Thailand and that you'll oftentimes have a Will drafted for it. 

Now if you are a foreign national that's here in Thailand and your only asset here is a Bank Account, it's not a terrible idea if you do have possible beneficiaries back home, to go ahead and have a Will even though you will probably say to yourself, "what do I need to will for? I don't have that much." For the Bank Account you're going to want it because in order to get the funds out of that account in a smooth manner and over to your proposed heirs, you have got to go through the Court System to do that and the best way to smoothly go through the Court System here in Thailand with regard to a Bank Account, Condo or any other property, is to have a Will drafted in compliance with the laws and formalities of the Kingdom of Thailand.