Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing International estate planning. What we are talking about here is the interaction of Thai and foreign Wills. Now again, I make these videos and I try to provide generally concise and relevant information but this video should be prefaced with look everyone's estate is very different and where one’s estate is distributed in terms of the physical location of various assets, as well as where one's primary residence is, all of that is going to factor in when doing estate planning. So really just at the outset understand each case could be wildly different so general information may not be overly useful on a case by case basis. It's a really good reason for those who are interested in planning their estate, structuring their estate in certain ways, it is probably a good idea to contact a legal professional to gain insight and guidance into how best to do that on an individualized basis. 

Now that said, in a general sense I will discuss sort of Thai versus foreign Wills because again the body of Law that governs for example what we call probate in the United States Common Law tradition or what they call succession here in Thailand, these things can be, there can be nuances in the law that are very different. For this reason in a number of cases oftentimes it's a good idea to have possibly two Wills - a Will in one's home jurisdiction as well as a Will pertaining the property one may have here in the Kingdom. So again that may be one way of dealing with this. 

Sometimes a unified Will structure is also a better way to deal with things. Again it depends heavily on the circumstances in the case. Another thing to bear in mind as again as we have discussed in videos, Thailand does not have Trust, Trust Law as we know it in especially the American Common Law tradition does not exist here in Thailand. So again that is another factor to consider as International legal structures may not have the same weight and bearing in terms of adjudication in the Thai succession process, what we would call the probate process; they might not even have the same bearing when being adjudicated here in Thailand. 

So again, probably not a bad idea when contemplating International estate planning matters to contact a legal professional and gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.