Divorce in Thailand: two doors, and they count your money on different days

There are exactly two ways out of a Thai marriage, and almost everything people find surprising about the process is really a consequence of which one they used. The two doors have different paperwork, different time limits, different privacy and — the part nobody mentions — different days on which your property is counted. Here is what the Code says after the 2024 rewrite, and what the registrars’ own handbook says about the divorce where you never have to see each other again.

Two sentences, and everything that follows from them

Section 1514 of the Civil and Commercial Code is short enough to memorise: a divorce may be effected only by the consent of both parties or by a judgment of the court, and a divorce by consent must be made in writing and signed by at least two witnesses.

Read it slowly, because there are three separate rules in there. There is no unilateral administrative divorce in Thailand — you cannot simply notify a registry that the marriage is over. There is no oral divorce, however emphatic. And the writing needs witnesses, which means the moment you decide to end a marriage by agreement, two other people are going to know about it.

Then section 1515, which the 2024 amending Act replaced, adds the sentence that catches people out: where a marriage has been registered under this Code, a divorce by consent is complete only once the parties have registered the divorce.

A signed divorce agreement is not a divorce. It is a promise to go and get one. Until somebody takes it to a registrar, both of you are married, with all of the consequences that carries — inheritance, the presumption of legitimacy for a child born in the next ten months, the marital-property pot still growing. The agreement in the drawer is the divorce equivalent of the wedding ceremony we wrote about in getting married in Thailand: the meaningful part of the day, and not the legal act.

Which version of the chapter you are reading

Almost every English-language page about Thai divorce is quoting text that is no longer in force, and the page usually does not know it.

The Act Amending the Civil and Commercial Code (No. 24) B.E. 2567 — the marriage equality Act — was published in the Royal Gazette on 24 September 2024 and, by its own section 2, came into force when 120 days had passed, on 22 January 2025. It is remembered for opening marriage to two people of any gender. What is much less widely noticed is that the same Act went through the rest of Book 5 and rewrote the divorce chapter almost section by section.

In the part of the Code this page is about, the Act repealed and replaced sections 1515, 1516, 1517, 1523, 1530, 1532 and 1533 in full, replaced the first paragraph of sections 1520 and 1522, replaced the second paragraph of section 1510, replaced sections 1504, 1508, 1536, 1537, 1538 and 1539, and reached forward into the succession book to replace section 1625(1), the provision that borrows the consent-divorce property rules to divide property when a marriage ends in death.

Sometimes the change is only vocabulary: sami and phariya, husband and wife, become khu somrot, spouse. Sometimes the substance moves. In section 1516 the numbering survived but the paragraphs were rewritten so that grounds that used to describe a husband’s conduct and a wife’s conduct differently now describe one spouse’s conduct. If you are comparing this page against something you read elsewhere and the wording differs, check the date on the other page first.

One further amendment is worth knowing about because it is even newer and gets missed in the other direction. The Act Amending the Civil and Commercial Code (No. 25) B.E. 2568 was published on 24 March 2025 and came into force the following day. It changed exactly one thing: section 1567(2), the provision on a parent’s power to punish a child, which now requires that punishment not be cruel, not be violent towards body or mind, and not be improper. It has nothing to do with divorce as such, but it sits directly behind the custody paragraphs below.

The consent route, in the order it actually happens

The Bureau of Registration Administration — the part of the Ministry of Interior that runs the district registries — publishes a handbook for its own registrars. It is the most useful document in this whole area, because it describes the counter rather than the statute.

For a divorce by consent where both of you attend the same office, the sequence is:

• You apply to the registrar at any district office, khet office, or Thai embassy or consulate. The handbook says this explicitly: without regard to the domicile of either party. There is no home-office rule to work around.
• The registrar checks the application, the identification of both parties, the evidence of the marriage registration, and the divorce agreement.
• The registrar completes the divorce register, form Kor Ror 6, and the divorce certificate, form Kor Ror 7.
• You and the two witnesses sign the register. The registrar signs the register and both certificates.
• The registrar hands one certificate to each of you.

What you bring: a Thai identity card, or identity confirmation through the ThaiD app; a passport, or an alien registration certificate, if you are a foreigner; the divorce agreement; and two witnesses. Documents in a foreign language must be translated and the translation certified.

What it costs: nothing. The handbook is unambiguous — registering a divorce, in every case, is free of charge. A certified copy of the register is 10 baht. If you have been quoted a government fee for a divorce registration, it is not a government fee.

The divorce where the two of you never meet

This is the part of Thai practice that surprises people most, and it is not a workaround or a local courtesy. It is a documented procedure with its own paperwork, called ya tang samnak thabian — divorce at different registries.

It exists for the obvious reason. Two people who have agreed to divorce may be in different provinces, or in different countries, or simply unable to stand in the same room. So the handbook splits the registration in two.

At the first registry, whichever of you goes first:

• You apply at any district or khet office or a Thai embassy or consulate, as before.
• The registrar checks the application, the identification of both parties, the marriage evidence and the divorce agreement — so the agreement has to be signed and in hand before this starts.
• The registrar takes your statement recording that you are the party applying first, and at which registry the other party will apply afterwards. That office is named on the day.
• Your particulars go into a Kor Ror 6 used separately for this purpose. For the absent party, only the particulars that are known are entered.
• You and the witnesses sign. In the signature box for the absent party, the registrar notes which registry that signature will be given at.
• The words “different registries” are written at the top right-hand corner of the register page.
• And the registrar tells you, in terms, that the divorce will take effect only when the other party has signed at the second registry.

At the second registry, once the documents arrive from the first:

• The registrar notifies the party who has not yet signed, and asks them to apply.
• The registrar explains the effect of registering the divorce to them. If they still confirm, the registrar checks their identification and has them verify the copies of the marriage evidence and the divorce agreement received from the first registry.
• Both parties’ particulars are entered in this registry’s own Kor Ror 6 and Kor Ror 7, and this registrar is the one who assigns the divorce register number.
• One certificate goes to the applicant in front of them; the other, with a copy of the register, goes back to the first registry, routed through the Central Registry if that office is abroad.

And then the clock, which is the reason this section exists:

Two consequences follow, and neither is usually spelled out.

The first is that in a two-registry divorce, the party who goes second decides whether it happens. There is no mechanism in the handbook for the first registrar to complete a divorce over the other party’s silence. If the sixty days run out, the route has failed, and what is left is either starting again or section 1516 and a courtroom.

The second is about money, and it is the sharpest thing on this page. Hold it until the property section below, because it needs section 1532 first.

What the register records, and what it only records if you ask

Here is a small procedural detail with large consequences. The handbook says that where both parties wish to have their agreement about property, parental power over children, or other matters recorded, the registrar shall enter it in the remarks column of the divorce register.

Read the conditional. The remarks column is not filled in automatically. A divorce can be registered perfectly correctly with nothing in it, and then the register — the document the state keeps, the one a bank or a court or a future registrar will look at — records that you are divorced and records nothing about what you agreed.

Your divorce agreement is still a contract between you either way. But there is an obvious difference between a term that sits in a state register with a number on it and a term that sits in a document one of you is holding. If the agreement matters, ask for it in the remarks column while you are standing there. Nobody will offer.

For a divorce registered on a judgment, the handbook is stricter with the registrar: the remarks column of the Kor Ror 6 must show the court, the case number, the date of the judgment, and the substance of the judgment.

The court route, and the twelve grounds numbered up to ten

If one of you will not consent, the only door left is section 1516, and you have to fit through one of its paragraphs.

The section was replaced in full by the 2024 Act, having last been rewritten in B.E. 2550. Its paragraphs are numbered (1), (2), (3), (4), (4/1), (4/2), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10) — twelve grounds behind a count that stops at ten, because two of them were interpolated rather than appended. This is why a guide can truthfully say “ten grounds” and still be describing the law incorrectly.

Three of these are worth a second look by anyone assuming Thai divorce law is permissive.

(4/2) is the closest thing to a no-fault ground, and it costs three years. Voluntary separation for more than three years, because the couple cannot live together in normal happiness, is available to either party — the paragraph says either party may sue for divorce, unlike most of the others, which give the right to “the other”. If you are separated and neither of you is willing to sign, this is the paragraph you are waiting on.

(2) and (6) are not about the act. Both are written as conduct plus a consequence measured against the particular marriage — the Code’s phrase is the couple’s condition, position and life together. The same behaviour can satisfy the ground in one marriage and not in another, which is exactly why these cases are fought rather than filed.

(1) is the one that carries money with it, through section 1523. That is a separate section and it is not automatic. More on it below.

The defences the Code writes in for the other side

Section 1517, also replaced in 2024, is short and it is the reason a divorce petition can fail on facts the petitioner supplied.

• Connivance destroys grounds (1) and (2). If the spouse relying on the ground consented to or connived in the act, that spouse cannot raise it. An arrangement that was tolerated while it suited both people is not a ground when it stops suiting one of them.
• You cannot rely on a condition you caused. Where the physical incapacity in ground (10) arose from the other spouse’s own act, that spouse cannot use it.
• The bond ground is discretionary. On a petition based on breach of a written bond under ground (8), if the court considers that the behaviour behind the bond was trivial, or unimportant to living together in normal happiness, the court may decline to grant a divorce. The ground is proved and the divorce is still refused.

And while the case runs, section 1530 — replaced in 2024 — lets the court make temporary orders as it thinks fit on the application of either party, expressly including marital property, where people live, maintenance of a spouse, and the custody and maintenance of children. The list in the section is illustrative, introduced by “such as”. If you are waiting years on ground (4/2), this is the section that decides how the waiting is arranged.

Money: the day your property gets counted

Two sections do the work, and the 2024 Act replaced both of them together.

Section 1533 is the simple one. When a divorce takes place, marital property is divided so that each spouse receives an equal share. One sentence, no discretion on the face of it, no percentages to argue about.

Section 1532 is the one that decides what “the marital property” means, and it gives two different answers:

• Divorce by consent of both parties — the property is divided as it stood at the time the divorce was registered.
• Divorce by judgment of the court — the part of the judgment enforcing property between the spouses takes effect retroactively to the day the divorce action was filed.

Sit with that for a moment, because it is the whole argument of this page.

In a contested divorce, the pot is frozen, in law, on the day somebody walked into the court office. Whatever either of you earns, spends, sells or acquires during the case is being measured against a line already drawn behind you. In a consent divorce, the pot is live until the moment of registration — and in the two-registry version, the moment of registration is the day the other party chooses to sign, any time inside those sixty days.

None of which tells you what is in the pot in the first place. Sin somrot and sin suan tua — marital and personal property — are defined in sections 1470 to 1474, and the rule that catches foreigners is that the fruits of personal property are marital even when the property itself is not. We set that out in the companion guide on registering a marriage, along with the property agreement that has to be made in the same minutes as the marriage or not at all. If there is a registered prenuptial agreement, it is that agreement, not section 1533, that divides things.

Section 1532 has one more limb worth naming: the division happens when the divorce happens, but during the marriage the Code also allows for division in the cases set out in the incapacity provisions. And section 1625(1), which the same Act amended, borrows the consent-divorce property machinery for a marriage that ends in death — with the share computed as from the day the marriage ended by that death. The mechanism is reused; the date changes each time.

Children: two decisions a consent divorce has to make in writing

A consent divorce cannot be silent about children. Two paragraphs, both replaced by the 2024 Act, make it compulsory.

Section 1520, first paragraph: in the case of a divorce by consent, the spouses shall make an agreement in writing as to which of them is to exercise parental power over which child. If no agreement is made, or they cannot agree, the court decides.

Section 1522, first paragraph: if the spouses divorce by consent, the divorce agreement shall state how much money both or either of them will contribute towards the children’s maintenance.

Note what each one requires. The custody rule wants a named holder of parental power, child by child — not a vague statement of goodwill. The maintenance rule wants a number in the agreement. Neither is satisfied by leaving it to be sorted out later, and a consent divorce is the only chance to settle either without a judge.

What parental power means is a separate question with its own chapter, and the newest piece of it is worth knowing because it changed in 2025. Section 1567 lists what the holder of parental power may do, and paragraph (2) — the power to punish a child for correction or discipline — was rewritten by the Act Amending the Civil and Commercial Code (No. 25) B.E. 2568, in force 25 March 2025, so that the punishment must not be cruel, not be an act of violence towards body or mind, and not be improper. If you are negotiating a custody term, that is the current outer limit of the power you are negotiating over.

One more provision sits behind the calendar rather than the agreement. Section 1536, first paragraph, replaced in 2024: a child born to a woman while she is the spouse of a man, or within three hundred and ten days of the marriage ending, is presumed to be that man’s legitimate child. Three hundred and ten days is ten lunar months and a margin, and it runs from the day the marriage ended — which, for a consent divorce, is the registration date again. Section 1537 then handles the case where a woman remarries in breach of the waiting rule in section 1453 and bears a child within the same 310 days: the child is presumed the new spouse’s, and the presumption against the former spouse is switched off unless a court says the child is not the new spouse’s.

Compensation, and the third party

Section 1523, replaced in 2024, is narrower than its reputation and wider in one direction than people expect.

It has three limbs:

• When the court grants a divorce on ground (1) — the adultery and maintaining-another ground — a spouse is entitled to compensation from the other spouse, and from the person who was maintained or honoured, or who was the cause of the divorce.
• Separately, a spouse may claim compensation from a person who took liberties with their spouse in an adulterous manner, or who openly held themselves out as having such a relationship with their spouse. This limb does not require a divorce at all.
• But if the spouse consented to or connived in the conduct in ground (1), or in the third party’s conduct under the second limb, no compensation can be claimed.

Two things to take from it. The first is that the right against the other person in the marriage is tied to a court divorce on a specific ground: a consent divorce, however clear the reason, does not trigger the first limb. The second is that the second limb is about display as much as conduct — the words cover someone who openly presented themselves as being in that relationship. What any of it is worth in a given case is a matter for a court, and no published tariff exists, so we are not going to print a figure.

The read-across clause, and the hole in it

This belongs on a divorce page because divorce is where spouse status stops mattering, and the 2024 Act had to decide what spouse status meant across the whole statute book.

Its section 67 does the work in two paragraphs, and the second is as important as the first.

Paragraph one: every provision of any law, rule, regulation, by-law, ordinance, notification, order or cabinet resolution that refers to husband, wife, or husband and wife is deemed to refer also to a spouse registered under the Code as amended. One sentence, and thousands of instruments updated without being reopened.

Paragraph two: that deeming does not apply where the instrument in question prescribes rights, duties, legal status, or any other related matter concerning husband, wife, or husband and wife differently. In other words, the read-across works everywhere the other law treats the two roles the same, and stops exactly where the other law treats them differently — which tends to be the provisions where it matters most.

Section 68 is the clean-up: state agencies responsible for post-legislative review must review the laws in their charge that turn on spouse status, and submit the results — with draft amendments where amendments are needed — to the Cabinet within one hundred and eighty days of the Act coming into force, or else report to the Cabinet why they could not. Counted from 22 January 2025, that deadline fell in late July 2025. We can tell you the duty and the date because they are in the Act. We could not read what any agency actually submitted, so we are not going to tell you how it went.

Section 66 adds a boundary that is easy to state and dangerous to elaborate: the amended Code does not apply where a specific law governs family or succession. We have not read those instruments and will not describe them.

One observation about the machinery, offered as an observation. The Ministry of Interior updated the registrars’ regulation for marriage equality — the fourth amendment of B.E. 2568, in force 23 January 2025, replaced the printed forms. But the Bureau of Registration Administration’s public handbook page on divorce still opens, in the version we read in October 2026, by describing the parties as a man and a woman who have registered a marriage. The regulation moved; the explanatory page in front of it had not. If you are a same-sex couple registering a divorce and a counter hesitates, the instrument to point at is the regulation and section 67, not the handbook.

What actually goes wrong

The agreement sits in a drawer. Two people sign, both feel finished, nobody registers. Months later one of them discovers they are married — typically when a bank, an employer or an immigration counter asks. Section 1515 is not a formality.

The sixty days run out. The first party signs, the second means to go and does not, the notification lapses, and the whole thing reverts. Nothing in the process warns you at day fifty.

The remarks column is empty. Property and custody were agreed, the registrar was never asked to record them, and the state register says only that the marriage ended.

A court divorce is filed without noticing the retroactive date. The property picture people argue over is the one on the filing day, not the one on the judgment day, and a year of movement in between may be argued about for nothing.

The judgment is taken to the registry too early. The handbook wants a certified copy of the judgment and a certificate that the case is final. A judgment still open to appeal is not a divorce you can register.

The witnesses are an afterthought. Section 1514 wants two signatures on the agreement, and the handbook wants two witnesses at the counter. People arrive as a couple and are sent away to find two adults.

A foreign document is untranslated. A marriage certificate from elsewhere, a foreign judgment, a passport in a non-Latin script — all of it needs certified translation, and that is a separate errand on a separate day.

Nobody thinks about the address. A divorce usually means somebody moves, and if you are a foreigner in Thailand, moving is its own reporting obligation. See TM30 and reporting where you stay, and, for the mechanics of leaving a condominium, moving in and out of a condo.

Questions people actually ask

Can I divorce in Thailand if we married somewhere else?

Sections 1514 and 1515 are written for a marriage registered under this Code, and the registrars’ handbook wants evidence of the marriage registration in front of it. A marriage made abroad can be recorded in Thailand under the family-status record procedure — form Kor Ror 22, free of charge, at any district office, with two witnesses, and with foreign documents legalised and translated — but the handbook states a condition for that record: at the time of the request, one or both parties must be of Thai nationality. Two foreigners married abroad cannot put the marriage into that register, which is the same limitation we describe from the other direction on the marriage page. Where that leaves a particular couple depends on their nationalities and on the courts of the country that married them, and that is a question for a lawyer who can see the documents.

Is a Thai administrative divorce recognised in my home country?

That is not a question Thai law answers, and we are not going to guess at another country’s rules. What we can tell you precisely is the Thai side: a divorce by consent is complete on registration under section 1515, the evidence of it is the Kor Ror 7 certificate issued to each party, and a certified copy of the divorce register costs 10 baht and can be obtained later. Take the certificate and, if asked for more, a certified copy of the register to whichever authority needs to be satisfied.

My spouse will not sign anything. What are my options?

Section 1516 and a court. The paragraph most separated couples end up looking at is (4/2): voluntary separation, because you cannot live together in normal happiness, for more than three years, or separation under a court order for more than three years — and unusually, either party may bring that action. Desertion under (4) is shorter at more than one year but requires wilful desertion rather than mutual separation. While a case is running, section 1530 lets the court make interim orders about property, where people live, spousal maintenance and the children.

Does adultery get me a better settlement?

It gets you a ground, and possibly compensation, but not a different split. Section 1533 divides marital property equally and does not mention conduct. Section 1523 is the conduct provision: on a divorce granted for ground (1), compensation is payable by the other spouse and by the person maintained or honoured or who caused the divorce — and a claim also lies against someone who took liberties with your spouse in an adulterous manner or openly held out such a relationship. If you consented to or connived in it, you get nothing under that section.

Who gets the children?

In a consent divorce, whoever the two of you name in writing, child by child, under section 1520 — and the agreement also has to state the maintenance figure under section 1522. If you cannot agree, the court decides. We are not going to describe how a Thai court weighs a custody dispute, because there is no published tariff and the answer in any real case turns on evidence about that family.

How long does a consent divorce take at the counter?

If both of you attend the same office with the agreement, identification and two witnesses, it is a single visit and you leave with a certificate each. The two-registry route is as long as the second party takes, up to the sixty-day limit. A court divorce is a court case, and we will not put a number on that.

Can we change the custody arrangement afterwards?

Parental power arrangements are not frozen by the fact that they were registered — the Code has its own provisions on changing who exercises parental power, and a court can be asked. What cannot be reopened administratively is the divorce itself. Also worth knowing from the other side of the Code: section 1467 stops a registered prenuptial agreement being changed or revoked after marriage except by permission of the court, so if your property position rests on one of those, it is a court matter and not a counter matter.

Is there any kind of legal separation short of divorce?

Not as a status you register. Separation appears in the Code as a fact with consequences — it feeds ground (4/2) after three years, it can be ordered by a court, and section 1530 lets a court arrange living apart while a divorce case runs. But there is no separated entry on the register between married and divorced. Section 1628, as amended in 2024, makes the point from the succession side: spouses who have deserted each other or are living apart without having legally divorced do not lose their statutory rights of inheritance from one another.