Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Intestate Succession and Wills in Thailand. So first off I want to be clear, we are using some common-law phraseology to describe Thai Legal issues. Now these videos, when I kind of do these purely educational videos, full disclosure, I am an American Attorney, I have Thai Nationality, I am the Managing Director of the firm, I am not a Thai Attorney, I simply am providing this for educational purposes and to provide this in English. The Thai Attorneys here in the firm videos just to make sure I am not completely talking totally off the script but this should not be viewed as like definitive legal advice. It is simply an exposition on how Thai law regarding Succession will operate especially as it pertains to a foreigner. So take it for what it is.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya City Expats Club -  Putting your Thailand Economic Affairs in Order. I am going to quote a small excerpt here. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail if you are interested. Yet again, the Pattaya Mail provides a really, really sound source of information on this kind of stuff and just kind of an overview for folks who are interested. Quoting directly: "Primarily, one should have a Will to ensure that their assets go to those they want and without a Will, Thailand like many other countries has a statutory provision setting for," (I think they meant forth) "setting for who gets one's assets if they die intestate." Yes, there is what we would call Intestate Succession here in Thailand so in the event that one passes away in Thailand, they may end up in a situation where things go maybe to somebody that they don't want them to go to otherwise, they would have preferred it to go to somebody else but if you don't have a testamentary instrument, AKA a Will, well Thai Law is just going to go ahead and operate. 

Meanwhile, if you have no heirs in Thailand that could lead to a scenario where effectively though not I would say by legal mechanism per se, but it could lead to a situation where effectively one's assets sort of escheat, in the common law context, escheat to the state. That doesn't exactly happen here in respect to Thailand per se but there are circumstances and we have discussed this in prior videos regarding reversion of Bank Accounts for example where if a Bank Account is not maintained or is not checked on, somebody doesn't walk into the bank and say "hey what's the balance of my account?" or they don't come up to an ATM, check the balance and pull out money or put in money, after I think it is 10 years then effectively that money, I think it just goes to the state via the bank if I recall correctly. Again we did a video on that some time ago. I will go back and try to dig through and see if I can find that video and go ahead and reference it in the description below. But yeah long story short it could lead to the same issue if one passes away without a Will in Thailand especially where one's heirs may be in a foreign country. For example if one is an American, one passes away here in Thailand and doesn't have any heirs in Thailand but they may have heirs in the United States, that can kind of lead to problems if you pass away without a Will. However if you pass with a Will, that leaves instructions to the Thai Courts and if it is properly formalized, the Thai Courts will then go ahead and there is a process for dealing with this, basically submit it to the Court, they go ahead and examine the document and if it is clear to them and all the formalities have been met that the person was of sound mind and that they executed this document and this was their testamentary intent, the Thai Courts will just issue a judgment to that effect and then one can go ahead for example and deal with the bank or any other Governmental Institutions as necessary to go ahead and make sure that one's assets are passed on to the heirs designated in one's testamentary instrument AKA, a Will. 

So the thing to take away from this video, it is probably a pretty good idea even if you only have just like a bank account or two in Thailand, to just have some form of a Will in order to ensure in the event one passes, one's funds or one's property goes to the heirs where one wishes them to go to, rather than sort of being dictated to by the Statutory Law here in the Kingdom of Thailand.