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The title of this video is Notions of Equity in Thailand. That is probably something of a daunting title for some; maybe some people just don't simply understand exactly what I am talking about here. But there is something I have noticed with people that are foreign that come to move to Thailand and live here is that they have some misnomers about how the legal system if you will works in Thailand.

What I am talking about here with respect to Equity, and I am not going to get too deep into what Equity specifically is other than just sort of a surface definition, but in the Common Law System which is utilized throughout much of the Commonwealth and the United States and the UK, there is this notion of Equity that goes back sort of to medieval times with respect to, to get into the history of it would be of not much use here, but what it goes back to is there used to be notions of law which you could have a decision at law that was unequitable, meaning sort of unfair, even though it was following the strict interpretation of the law. So basically in the Common Law System, this notion of Equity was formed and the notion came from something called the Court of the King's Conscience. It was basically a notion that okay we have this legal system but sometimes decisions that are made under the legal system interpreting the law that don't result in a fair outcome for people in practice, so they created this notion of Equity. In the American system, this notion of Equity and this notion of law was sort of blended back together; in the British System it is my understanding that there is still sort of a notion of a Court of Chancery which has sort of a different, slightly different function than the Courts of Law. 

The only reason I am bringing this up is these are ideas that are fairly deeply ingrained in most, at least Anglo-American’s sense of legal thinking or sense of fairness. It is an assumption that is made as to how things work in the real world and how sort of the Courts are going to look at things if a matter was ever adjudicated. In Thailand this notion of Equity simply really doesn't exist in the same way that we think of it in the Western, in the Common Law System. Most notably this comes to the forefront in matters involving "trust". In Thailand there, effectively there virtually are no "trust", there is no notion of 'trust' in Thailand; trust the way we think of in a legal sense in say the United States or the Commonwealth.  What I am talking about here is the notion, under Trust Law again I don't need to get too deep, but there is a bifurcation of legal ownership and equitable ownership. So someone, for example this happens in the case of say nominees. We have so-called nominee shareholders, they own it in their name but there is an agreement between that nominee and some other party that in fact those shares are actually owned by this other party whose his name is not on the shares. In Thailand that simply does not exist. In fact nominee shareholders are explicitly illegal pursuant to the Foreign Business Act of the Kingdom of Thailand and some various other statutory law here. So nominees and these notions simply don't exist the way that Westerners think of them.

Another thing to bear in mind with respect to like notions of Equity, for example here in Thailand you will often see American or foreign of any nationality, having a house but that house is in their wife's name. Then there is sort of an assumption that just because it is in the wife's name, you have some stake in that house in the event of some dispute or something or maybe a divorce, that house or at least some partition of value is going to be allocated to you, to an individual whose name isn't necessarily on the Title Deed of that house but they feel like that they have some equitable interest in that home. That's really generally not the way that the Legal System here operates and this is just a general sort of overview of how there is a different way of thinking when it comes to these sort of issues that we think of that in the West are basically called Equity; it just simply doesn't exist in the same way in Thailand. That is not to say that the Thai Courts are in any way unfair. In fact the Thai Courts will often go out of their way to be fair but these notions of just assuming that even though something is in somebody else's name, “oh I actually have an interest in that”, that may hold true for a Court in say the United States or the Commonwealth where they may look into the situation and say "well actually, out of the need to have an equitable partition in this matter, even though so and so's name isn't necessarily on this property or on these shares or whatever, there was an agreement and due to Equity we are going to make this right, make this fair, make it equitable." In Thailand, that is not necessarily how things are going to play out. 

So much like the video on this channel regarding "Things to think of before coming to Thailand," this is something to think of when living here is that there aren't these notions that we are used to operating under in a Western paradigm or at least these notions are not as strongly held or are definitely not the kind of foundations to the legal system here that they are in the West. It is just something to ponder.