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ResourcesFamily LawMarriage RegistrationAmericans Registering a Marriage in Thailand: Timing Issues

Americans Registering a Marriage in Thailand: Timing Issues

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing marriage registration here in the Kingdom of Thailand.

Some issues that have just come to the forefront at least in my mind in recent weeks but these have kind of been percolating up over the past few months, they basically pertain to marriage registration for Americans in Thailand and that could be two Americans marrying each other, an American marrying a third country national or and this is more often the case, an American marrying a Thai here in the Kingdom. We were talking about the issues associated with the timing of being able to register that marriage. 

In the past this could usually occur within like a 10-14 day period and the reason it took a little bit of time is there is documentation for the American side to prove that that American can in fact legally marry in the Kingdom of Thailand; basically certain affidavits, notably called marriage registration affidavit or affidavit of single status needs to be issued by the United States Embassy here Bangkok or the US Consulate up in Chiang Mai. In either case, that document then needs to be translated and legalized and then it can be used to go ahead and register a marriage. 

Now in the past, this overall process in my opinion was much more streamlined. Things have changed. It is not really anybody's fault; it is just the way that the system evolved. For one thing, the formalities associated with Thai marriage registration have changed; certain documentation needs to be dealt with. That is an issue for another video frankly I don't want to get fully into that. For this video, one of the big things that has changed is in the past there were a lot more slots available for going to the United States Embassy, specifically the American Citizen Services section of the United States Embassy to go ahead and get one's documentation notarized for use here in Thailand.  Those slots have been truncated substantially since the end of the issuance of Income Affidavits by the Embassy for use in visa matters. We have done many videos on this channel on that topic but suffice it to say for this video, they have cut down on the number of appointments that will be given out on a daily basis and for this reason we are seeing a bit of a longer backlog with respect to being able to get into the Embassy. There was a time when you could actually show up to American Citizen Services with no appointment and just get in line get in and do your thing. That is no longer the case. Appointments are now required except in massively exigent circumstances requiring generally speaking an emergency of some sort, but barring an emergency, you need to go ahead and make an appointment and now there are few appointments than there once were. We are seeing it take longer to go ahead and get the documentation necessary from the Embassy done in order to move through the Thai part of the process.

For that reason, I think it is safe to presume that moving forward the overall processing time to get a marriage registered in Thailand is going to increase. Where once I think it was safe to say maybe 10 - 14 days I think now we can be looking at 21 days to maybe even as long as a month to go ahead and fully get a Thai marriage registered between an American and a Thai national, between two Americans or between an American and a foreign national here in the Kingdom of Thailand.