Integrity Legal - Law Firm in Bangkok | Bangkok Lawyer | Legal Services Thailand Back to
Integrity Legal

Legal Services & Resources 

Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.

Contact us: +66 2-266 3698

info@integrity-legal.com

ResourcesThailand Real Estate & Property LawTitleThailand Real Estate Law: Comparing Servitude to Easement

Thailand Real Estate Law: Comparing Servitude to Easement

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Real Estate Law. Every once in a while I like to do one of these videos, it is sort of comparative law. To be clear, I am an American Attorney, I am a naturalized Thai citizen but I am an American Attorney. I deal with Thai Attorneys here in the office. I act as Managing Director. Oftentimes I may help in liaising legal matters with clients between the Thai side and provide some context with respect to similarities between Thai principles and in my case, American legal principles or Common Law legal principles. 

This is one of those circumstances. We have had some Thai Attorneys here in the office look at this video. They know what I am saying in here. It should not be viewed as dispositive information from a Thai legal professional nor from an American legal professional in the sense case-specific advice. This is simply just sort of a discussion if you will on comparing these concepts in the Thai system vs. the Western Common Law American system if you will. 

So in the American system, when you are using someone's property, generally it is adjoining your own, for some sort of ancillary purposes to the use of your property. For example sort of as an entry way to get to your property or I often see this in the context of parking spaces. Someone may own a building, there may be a parking lot next to that building and the owner of the building may want to rent a parking space from that person or if they want a more permanent right, they go ahead and gain an easement which is a specific right of use for that piece of ground, in this case, we are going to look at it from the context of land, of that piece of real estate, that piece of land for a specific purpose. In Thailand they call this a servitude. It is a different term because it is a different body of law. So when thinking about easements in Thailand first of all and I need to be very clear on this, not all legal principles associated with easements translate directly into the Thai legal system so servitudes may require a different framework for registration of the right. They may not confer the same rights depending on circumstances and things like presumptive or in the case of the US prescriptive easements, that may not apply with respect to analysis of servitudes. 

So again depending on the set of circumstances at play, one may or may not be able to make sort of a lateral analysis, a lateral move of the analysis of easements over to an analysis of servitude but there is a similar concept in the Thai jurisprudence, this notion of a servitude is similar to easements which are used in the Common Law tradition.