Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing property and real estate planning; getting ones ducks in a row if you will with respect to property and real estate when living in Thailand when married to a Thai national.

I thought about making this after a comment on another video we did where we were talking about property rights or lack thereof for foreign spouses of Thai nationals. There was a comment on a video and I thought I would go ahead and quote it. Quoting directly: "Ben, I think this video deserves a follow-up on the basics of how a foreign spouse can mitigate around this; i.e. my understanding is the 30 year lease on actual property? Am I wrong?"

Basically what is being asked here is okay understanding that foreign nationals are not entitled to have rights to land specifically real estate land here in Thailand even if they are married to a Thai national. We have gone into great detail in other videos on that. The question arising in this video from that comment is for example what about 30 years for the foreign spouse of a Thai national? Yeah that is certainly a possibility. We have talked about that a lot on this channel in the past. It is possible for a foreign national to secure a long-term lease on property here in Thailand and the property owner could be one's spouse. There also may be other methods of dealing with that. Bifurcation of title as we have discussed in other videos where you essentially bifurcate the title to the housing structure from the actual land itself. Other things like possibly in certain circumstances mortgages can be utilized or even what are called usufructs which in the way that they are used in the foreign community here in Thailand, I liken them to what are called "life estates" in American jurisprudence with respect to real estate. It is basically usage of property in one's lifetime and then when one passes away, that right extinguishes and it reverts back to the underlying landlord. 

Again, these are all circumstances which I should say it is circumstantially dependent, what is going to be best but yes there are methodologies for, for lack of a better term mitigating structuring a marital estate in such a way that the foreign spouse is not entirely exposed when it comes to usage of the property ongoing in the event of separation or in the event of possibly divorce, dissolution of marriage. Again, it is all going to be factually specific, factually dependent.

Those who are interested in this topic, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance as to what works best under your circumstances.