Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing conferring Thai property in a Will. Now I am using “property” in a very broad sense here. This could be property rights, like lease rights, could be things like a condo ownership, even a bank account ownership, so conferring it in a Will. What are we talking about here?

Well if you die in Thailand without any type of Will, so intestate as we call it the Common Law System, that is a set of circumstances where the Thai Courts are going to have to decipher who your heirs are and then make disbursements within the estate to the heirs that they deem appropriate. Then, depending on circumstances, the Thai Court may need to name what we would call an Executor. Again, Thai system is Civil Law a little bit different, it is not called probate, it is called succession; differences in terms. Conceptually there are some analogous notions although it is not a one-to-one comparison, so understand that just as a preface to the rest of this video. 

Now if you have a Thai Will, it makes things a lot smoother for one's beneficiaries notably because the Thai Court now knows who that person wanted named for example as executor or executrix; they now know who they felt was the beneficiary of their estate, who should be the beneficiary of their estate. Now again depending on circumstances it may not be possible. I have seen some quite honestly some kind of malicious Wills out there especially to spouses sometimes where they try to almost disinherit them under certain circumstances. Sometimes the Thai Courts will step in and say okay, there are certain considerations under Thai Law we have to keep in mind especially for spouses. That being said, if it is just a standard Will for the most part, it is basically going to be properly processed. The Court is going to say, yeah as long as the formalities are met, we concur; we are going to order that the Will be carried out basically. Under those circumstances it is a far smoother process than needing to deal with coming up with who is owed what, under what circumstances, and who is going to administer the estate, when there is no Will at all.