A Thai will template is easy to find. You download it, type your name and your assets into the blanks, print it, sign it and put it in a drawer. It looks finished. The problem shows up years later, when your family takes it to a bank or to the Land Office in Chiang Mai and the officer says no. Here are the reasons we see most often. None of them is about the wording of the template. All of them are about how it was signed, who signed it, and what it says about your other will.
Thai law looks at how the will was signed
Thai law accepts a typed will only if you sign it in front of two witnesses who are both in the room at the same time, and who then sign it in front of you. Most templates say “sign before two witnesses” and leave it there. In practice the will gets signed at home, a neighbour signs the next day, and a friend signs a week later when he visits. That will is not valid. The date matters too. A will with no date, or with a date that does not match the day the witnesses signed, can be refused by the court.
There is one form of will that needs no witnesses at all. If you write the whole will by hand, every word of it, and date and sign it, Thai law accepts it. A typed template that you sign alone is not this. Many people think it is.
The wrong witnesses lose the gift
Under the Civil and Commercial Code, a person who witnesses a will cannot receive anything under it, and neither can that person’s husband or wife. The gift to them is void. The rest of the will can still stand, but the person you most wanted to provide for gets nothing from it. The common case is a foreign husband who asks his Thai wife and her brother to witness the will that leaves everything to her. The will is signed correctly, and the gift to the wife is void.
A witness must also be an adult under Thai law, which normally means twenty years old, and must be able to see, hear and speak. A template does not check this for you.
The revocation clause cancels your other will
Almost every template starts with “I revoke all former wills and codicils”. If you already have a will in the United States, the United Kingdom or Australia, that sentence cancels it. The same happens in reverse. If you later update your home will and it starts with the same sentence, your Thai will is gone, and nobody in Thailand will know.
A Thai will for a foreigner should say what it covers. Normally it covers only assets in Thailand, and it should say in plain words that it does not revoke the will that covers your assets elsewhere. Your lawyer at home should know the Thai will exists, and should write the next version of your home will the same way.
The trust that does not exist in Thailand
Templates written for Americans often put the assets into a trust, or leave them to “the trustee of my living trust”, or create a trust for the children until they turn twenty-five. Thai law does not recognise a trust created by a will. The clause has no effect. Whatever you meant to protect through the trust falls back to the ordinary rules, and the children receive the assets outright. If you want to hold money for a child, or have someone manage a property for a few years, Thai law has other ways to do it, but they have to be written in from the start.
Land cannot stay in a foreign name
A will can leave a condominium unit to a foreign son or daughter. Land is different. A foreigner who inherits land in Thailand cannot, as a rule, keep it. The Land Department gives a period to sell, usually up to a year. A template that leaves “my house in Chiang Mai” to a foreign child does not say what should happen to the land under the house. That silence becomes a dispute, or a forced sale.
Corrections in pen
People change their minds. They cross out a name on the template, write a new one above it and initial it. Under Thai law a change to a will is valid only if it is made in the same form as the will itself, which for a typed will means signed again in front of two witnesses. A handwritten correction on a typed will is not read. The court reads the original wording, and if the original wording is now unreadable, that part of the will fails.
The will is not the last step. The court is.
In Thailand a will does not transfer anything by itself. A bank will not release an account and the Land Office will not transfer a title until a court has appointed an administrator of the estate. The person you name must apply to the court in Chiang Mai and attend the hearing in person. A template that names an executor who lives abroad and cannot travel, or names no executor at all, leaves your family to work that out after your death. A will written in English is fine, but the court needs a Thai translation, and the translation has to be exact.
What a Thai will needs
It needs to be signed in one of the forms Thai law accepts, by witnesses who get nothing under it. It needs to say which assets it covers and that it leaves your other will alone. It needs an executor who can come to Chiang Mai. It should leave things only to people who can lawfully keep them. And it should be kept where your family can find it, with a Thai translation if it is in English.
A template can give you the headings. It cannot check any of this for you. If you want to prepare before you see a lawyer, our will checklist lists the facts and documents a Thai will needs. It is free to download, and it is the same form we use in the office.
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