Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing foreign Wills here in Thailand. So to be clear what we are talking about, if you draft a Will which comports with the formalities in Thailand and oftentimes you probably want to go ahead and do this in Thai, presuming you are a native English speaker or you are okay with English oftentimes we see these Wills being drafted in dual language but Thai would be controlling and generally speaking you are going to want to draft it in Thai if you are doing a local Thai Will. 

A question arises oftentimes with respect to foreign Wills in Thailand. What are we talking about here? Well Wills that are drafted perhaps in another jurisdiction physically but that might comport with other jurisdiction's rules with respect to Wills. Now the question, this actually gets into some pretty deep issues of conflicts of law. We have actually seen cases here. One of the Attorneys that primarily deals with what might be called probate in the Common Law vernacular but is referred to as succession in the Civil Law vernacular, one of our Thai Attorneys who deals with a lot of this here in the office, she has dealt with cases where the Will itself is sort of more drafted from a foreign standpoint. You are trying to go ahead and get the Thai Courts to recognize it, uphold it, execute on it. Again like anything in the Law, in a way the Judge is God when it comes to matters sometimes of conflicts of Law. Their final determination definitely is going to be what is going to drive the outcome. 

But there is a lot going on with foreign Wills. It may be possible to get it executed through the Thai Court system depending on the facts of the case. That said and the reason for this video, why create the possibility of nebulousness within that process? Why open oneself up to the possibility of problems in the execution of that Will? If you have assets in Thailand, it is probably not a terrible idea to look at having a Thai Will which is written not only in the Thai language but is written in compliance with the formalities associated with considering a testamentary instrument to be valid in this jurisdiction and then having it drafted by somebody who actually knows how the process works so that that document can be properly moved through the system when the time comes.