Transcript of the above video: 

We've drafted a number of Wills in the past couple of  weeks and I am cc'd into the emails where I see my Thai colleagues, Thai Attorneys here in the office who are communicating to our foreign clients, "hey we need this document, we need that document to go ahead and formalize your Will" and folks sometimes will kind of kick back on us and say, "well why do you need this? why do you need that?" 

Look, the formalities, anybody that has ever dealt with anything in the Thai legal system, it's I think safe to say, and not in any way untoward to say that Thailand operates on a very formalistic legal system. Formalities matter in the Thai system. Quite honestly, I think the departure from, I won't say formalism but believing that there needs to be some level of formality in legal proceedings, in the drafting of legal documents and things in an American context especially, has led to something of a degradation in how we do things in our legal system. 

What I'm trying to say is I think more formality - not a lot more - but a little bit more formality in the American system might be a better thing because when you go through certain hoops properly, you know that whatever instrument it is you are trying to create, will do the job when called upon. That's basically the situation when it comes to testamentary instruments aka Wills here in Thailand. And look yeah, we often do need more identity documents than you might otherwise need to draft a Will, for example in one of the American states or something of this nature, or even maybe the UK, Thailand requires more formalities: a little bit more in terms of witnesses, sometimes adding a fingerprint might help although it's not necessarily a deal breaker if you don't have a fingerprint on a Will document, but witnesses, also identity documentation, documentation especially pertaining to financial instruments, bank accounts, property - if it's going to be conveyed through a Will - all of that is going to be necessary when drafting the document. 

So again, this is more a video to just tell people, “Hey we're not asking for the documentation we ask for with respect to Will drafting for no reason. It's just look, in this jurisdiction they take a more stringent view on formality than perhaps in other jurisdictions - with an S - and for that reason you may have to effectively pony up more documentation than you might otherwise do in some other jurisdiction, but if you want to have a Will here that is drafted in line with Thai formalities so as to be smoothly processed through what we would call in a Common Law vernacular, 'probate', and what we would call 'succession' in the Thai vernacular, you're going to have to go through those hoops, you are going to have to meet those formalities in order to draft the proper instrument here in the Kingdom of Thailand.