Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question: “Is there "fault" divorce in Thailand?” For those who are unaware of what "fault" divorce is or "no fault" divorce, in the Common Law systems at least in the United States if you go back about a hundred years ago, they used to have what was called "fault" divorce which and I believe in, somebody in the comments can correct me if I am wrong, I believe in New York they still have something similar to this. I am not a New York Attorney, I don't know but it is my understanding that still New York pays some lip service to the notion of kind of a fault divorce system although as a practical matter it is effectively very much like a no-fault divorce system.

In the fault divorce system you had to show cause and you had to show that there was sort of an injuring party in the underlying marriage whose fault it was if you will, that the marriage was ending: things like adultery, irreconcilable differences, abandonment; these things would come up in a fault divorce setting. No fault divorce came along later and kind of replaced that, that is not really the within the bailiwick of this video but the question posed is "In Thailand do they have "fault" divorce"? In a sense they do. Let's be clear, I am doing another video contemporaneously with this one where we kind of compare no fault divorce to Thai divorce but in this video we are talking fault divorce. 

To be clear, there is a Civil Registrar system in Thailand whereby one has to show that they are legally married to somebody, they have to prove their identity to the relevant Government Officer at a given Civil Registrar Office and upon providence of that information and documentation, the parties if they consent can just sign off on a divorce and right then and there, they are just divorced and they are done; it's a Civil Registrar system. If they fail to come to a consensus, to come to an agreement regarding dissolution of a marriage, then effectively in my opinion, you do kind of go into something akin to the “fault” divorce, to a divorce wherein you are looking at having to prove up why you want to get divorced, the reasoning behind it. Again, it's not an apples to apples comparison. US Common Law for example is very different than the Thai Civil Law. Common Law generally is different than the Civil Law and then Thailand has its own way of doing things so I am not going to call this an apples to apples comparison but the way to look at it for somebody who is looking at divorce, probably a layman watching this video, yeah if you can't come to an agreement to go ahead and sign off on a divorce together at the Civil Registrar's office, you are going to end up in a proceeding that's not very much unlike the fault divorce system in many Common Law jurisdictions as it existed some roughly 75, 100 years ago.