SmartWills Turns Ten. Here Is What a Decade of Wills Says About Waiting.

Chiang Mai, 12 September 2026

SmartWills marks its tenth anniversary this evening at the Tropicana Grand Ballroom in Petaling Jaya, Selangor. Ten years ago the idea sounded small. Let an ordinary person make a proper will without taking a day off work. Ten years later that idea has grown into a regional platform, and Thailand is its newest chapter.

Congratulations to Mr. Dylan Ng and to every member of the SmartWills team. As co-founder of SmartWills Thailand, our office sends its congratulations from Chiang Mai this evening.

A milestone is also a good moment to look at the thing itself. Ten years of will writing teaches you one lesson above all others. People do not refuse to make a will. They postpone it.

WHY PEOPLE POSTPONE

Almost nobody says no to a will. They say later.

Later has reasons that sound sensible. You are healthy. Your family gets along. Your assets are still moving. You do not know who to ask. You suspect the whole thing will take a week and cost more than it should.

So the will goes on the list for next year, every year. That is not carelessness. That is friction. Remove the friction and people act. That is the whole insight behind SmartWills, and ten years of use has proved it.

WHAT LATER COSTS YOU IN THAILAND

Postponing is not neutral. In Thailand it hands your decisions to the Civil and Commercial Code.

Without a will, six classes of statutory heirs inherit in strict order. A higher class shuts out a lower one. The spouse inherits alongside them. Your partner of twenty years, if you never married, receives nothing. Your stepchild, if you never adopted him, receives nothing. The temple or the charity you supported for a decade receives nothing.

Then comes the delay. In Thailand nothing moves without the court. A bank will not release the account and the Land Office will not transfer the title until the court appoints an administrator. Your family waits months while the estate sits frozen. They wait during the exact period when they need money most.

None of that is punishment for doing something wrong. It is simply what happens when you leave the decision to the code.

A WILL IS A FORM, NOT A CEREMONY

Here is the part that surprises most people. Thai law does not require your will to be made in a lawyer’s office. It requires the correct form.

An ordinary will must be in writing. It must carry the date on which it is made. You must sign it in front of at least two witnesses, and those witnesses must sign in your presence. A person who benefits under the will cannot serve as a witness. Get the form wrong and the will fails, or the affected clause fails.

That is why software works for a straightforward estate. It asks the right questions in the right order and produces the document in the form the code demands. The signing still happens on paper, in front of witnesses, exactly as the law requires.

WHERE YOU STILL NEED A LAWYER

A platform is right for a simple estate. It is not right for every estate, and we will tell you when it is not.

You need a lawyer when land or a condominium sits inside a structure, when a foreign spouse is involved, when your assets sit in more than one country, when a business or a shareholding has to pass, when the estate may cross the inheritance tax threshold, or when you expect somebody to challenge the will.

The platform handles volume. Our office handles complexity. Neither one pretends to be the other.

TO THE SMARTWILLS TEAM

Ten years of trust is not built in a launch. It is built one family at a time, quietly, in documents that nobody sees until they are needed.

Congratulations on the decade. Thailand is glad to be part of the next one.

If you want to start your own Thai will, write to us at aphiwat@aphiwatlaw.com.