Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Wills in Thailand. So when we are discussing Wills, a major issue that can come into the issue of Wills is what's called testamentary intent. Testamentary intent is, did the person making the Will intend to bequeath or intend to make that instrument when they made it. Essentially, did they know what they were doing? Which then raises the question of what is called capacity and/or competence. Were they competent? Were they of sound mind when they went ahead and made this Will? 

 Now I have unfortunately have had to see people have their capacity eroded over the years, especially close family members over the years, and it is hard to watch, it is just hard to watch, it is really hard to watch actually. And unfortunately, a lawyer can be put in a very awkward position especially where somebody clearly who does not have capacity anymore, starts talking about making changes to their testamentary instruments and things of this nature and then you get into a lot of ethical issues that lawyers have to deal with. The point of this video though is just kind of talking about this in a general sense so that folks understand there are certain times to draft documentation that will pertain to one down the road and sometimes it is a good idea, especially what I call middle, older age, kind of middle 60s where clearly people generally speaking, still have their capacity, have their competence making a hard and fast decision on a Will and just sort of saying, kind of having the mindset of "look, I am going to stick with this; this is what we are going to do", because if you wait around or if you try to change things later, you could run into competency issues. Now it may be necessary to change things later so again this is all going to be circumstantially dependent. I'm not making a hard and fast recommendation, "oh, you are in your 60s, set your Will and never change it", that's not what I am saying. But that said, when you get a little older and I have watched this first hand and I am not looking forward to going through it myself as I inevitably will unless I am hit by a bus tomorrow, but I am not looking forward to having to go through this myself but yeah it is something to think about. Capacity is something to think about.

Things that we do from a formality standpoint to deal with issues of capacity and confidence, witnesses. A perfect example of why witnesses are very much part of the Will process at least here in Thailand because that way you have at least got somebody else who said "yeah I saw him. He looked compos mentis to me. He is fine, I talked to him, nothing out of the ordinary". So again capacity and competence, major issues when it comes to Wills. There are things that can be done from a formality standpoint to kind of deal with those issues. But another thing to think about if you are kind of a senior citizen and again you are in that kind of middle, older age and you haven't dealt with estate planning, probably not a bad time to look at that and it is probably not a bad piece of advice to do that sooner rather than later.