Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are going into 2025 here. I thought I'd make a quick roundup video on Thai Marriage, marriage registration here in Thailand. 

As discussed in prior videos, Thailand is not a Common Law jurisdiction that utilizes a Civil Law system, so the Civil Law Marriage System is somewhat different than what we are used to in a Common Law sort of context; it's a little bit different. One of the big differences here is that simply having a ceremony, holding oneself out as being married or yourselves out as being married, is not, unlike a Common Law jurisdiction that recognizes so-called Common Law marriage, that is not in and of itself presumptively enough to consider a marriage to have occurred. So, you have to actually go through the formalities here in Thailand of their Civil Registration of Marriage system in order to be considered legally married in this jurisdiction. 

Now that being said, are there changes to this coming in 2025? It's worth pointing out that roughly over the COVID years - let's call it 2020 up to 2025 - we have seen marked differences in the way marriage registration works, most notably it takes a great deal more time. There was a time one could get married, usually within a given business week we used to be able to get that done. These days, especially if it's marriage to a foreigner, it's going to take more like a month, it's been our experience, at least here in Bangkok, because getting all the documentation from the Embassy and then processing it through the various organs of the Thai State before you can then go to the local Civil Registrar Office and then thereby register your marriage. That's all changed; it's become a lot more time consuming, quite honestly for better or worse, I would argue probably for the worst, but whatever it's what we have to deal with. 

One major change we are looking at seeing with regard to marriage registration going into 2025, is the fact that they have legalized same-sex marriage here in Thailand, and that's going to be a major change in 2025 as that comes into effect in January of 2025. Exactly what the ramifications of that are going to be remain to be seen, but we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.