Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing leases in the context of drafting and perfecting Wills here in Thailand. There has been a lot of talk recently about foreign nationals, a push towards sort of an anti-nominee policy here in Thailand. 

Basically, what we are seeing is law enforcement is heavily scrutinizing corporate structures, especially those that are being utilized seemingly by foreign nationals to effectively control land in Thailand and I've done a number of videos on that. The sort of upshot to that is I have had a number of clients and folks corresponding with us say, "well okay, Leases may be a better way to go with regard to dealing with getting usage rights in Thailand to some sort of property. But what happens in the event I pass away?" 

Well if you have a registered lease - so as we have discussed in other videos, it's possible to have a lease up to 3 years without registration, but to register a lease in Thailand for longer than three years, one must have it registered on the Chanote; so that person's name needs to be on actually the back of the Chanote Title. Now depending on the terms of a lease, if it's possible to assign the lease, then it's possible to have that lease assigned intestate via a Will; so yeah, it is possible to assign rights under a lease. Let's say somebody gets a 30-year lease. They live another 10 years, they pass away and they will the remainder of the lease to a loved one or something, or anyone for that matter. It is possible - again it would depend on the underlying terms in the underlying lease - it would be possible to assign that right to another individual even via a Will. Now as we have discussed in other videos, here in Thailand the Supreme Court has done away with the so-called 30 + 30 - plus 30 oftentimes - mechanism where they have said, "oh this notion that you can automatically reassign leasing rights at the end of a given lease, that's been thrown out". So again, if we are talking about past the duration of a registered 30-year lease, it may not be possible to do anything with that type of arrangement. 

But where it's a registered lease, and there is an assignment clause in the lease, it may be possible through a Will, to go ahead and bequeath those rights, that ability to remain using and developing the land past the time of the original person who leased the property. 

Now there are formalities that may need to be done including the Will has to go through what we in the Common Law would call in our vernacular, Probate, what they call Succession in Thailand, so you have got to go through certain formalities but yeah, it may be possible to effectively bequeath a lease to another individual via a Will here in the Kingdom of Thailand.