Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Wills, Girlfriends and Breakups. Why you ask are we discussing this? Well I did a video about a week ago where I said, and I will reiterate here, going back the last couple of years we have had to deal with a lot of news dealing with Thai Immigration. It seemed to be kind of the major topic of the day for a long time and I was happy to talk about that because it was constantly changing. Thailand is reopen now, we have sort of put that in the rearview mirror Thank God, and here we are. So I asked folks I said look what do you want me to talk about?

I got a lot of interesting correspondence coming back including this comment which was on that video which basically said "Wills, girlfriends and breakups legally speaking: potential hazards and liabilities." So basically what is sort of the interplay between having a Thai Will, a Thai significant other and then that relationship ends etc. So a couple of things to keep in mind. If we are talking specifically about girlfriends as opposed to spouses, that we need to set out here from the outset. So spouses are going to have different rights vis a vis one's estate compared to a significant other that is not legally married to a given individual. What are we talking about here? Well despite what a Will even may say, there may be circumstances where a legally married spouse can contest that based upon their specific circumstances. Again not going to get too deep into that, it is going to be circumstantially dependent but bear in mind that it is a fundamentally different thing when you are talking about a legally recognized spouse as opposed to a girlfriend, or boyfriend or whatever, just significant other. 

So the thing to understand is when you make a Will, that is your testamentary instrument, so as long as you are alive, you can always change it, as long as you are alive and you have capacity. Now if down the road, let's say you have a Will, you wrote it, you specified a specific, in this case we will call it a girlfriend, and then you die. Well guess what? If that Will goes to Court, regardless of what you would have otherwise wanted in the interim between your death and the writing and the formalization of that Will, it is a pretty good chance that the Court is going to go ahead and say: "Well this is the best we know what he wanted to do so we are going to give it to that person." So whether or not a break up has occurred in the meantime may not have anything to do with how that property is distributed per that Will because that Will may be the only thing the Court has to go by to deal with essentially the disbursement of one's estate. So something to keep in mind. 

Now honestly my answer to that is look if you are worried about that maybe seriously reconsider who you write your Will to and maybe set something up where perhaps you could set an Executor in your Will and tell that Executor, look if everything's going good with me and so and so at the time of my death, I want so and so to have this and I am instructing you accordingly. That may be a way to deal with that, but again it is all going to be driven by circumstances. Long story short, if you have any qualms about what is in one's Will, really a good idea to deal with that early and often.