Wills and inheritance in Thailand: your will decides who takes, three other statutes decide who may keep it
Most English-language advice about Thai wills answers one question — how do I write a valid one — and stops. That is the easy part, and the Code is generous about it. The hard part is what happens next, because a death in Thailand is decided by three separate legal systems that do not consult one another: the Civil and Commercial Code says who takes, the Act on Conflict of Laws says whose law even applies, and the Land Code and Condominium Act decide whether the person you chose is allowed to keep the thing you left them. A perfectly valid will can leave a foreign friend a condominium they must sell within a year.
The short version
- Thailand has had an inheritance tax since 1 February 2016. The claim that it does not is nine years out of date.
- It is a recipient tax: 100 million baht free per recipient, per deceased, then 10% — or 5% for an ascendant or descendant.
- A spouse is outside the Act entirely. Not a lower rate; the statute does not apply.
- Only five kinds of asset are taxable. Gold, cash, jewellery, art and unregistered movables are not among them.
- Your will need not be in Thai, need not be registered, and need not involve a lawyer.
- But the writer and the witnesses must take nothing — and breaching that makes the will or clause void, not merely reduced.
- Before there is an estate there is a wind-up of the marriage. The spouse is paid twice, and the first payment is not inheritance.
- Parents can be promoted into the children's class, which splits an estate four ways where you expected two.
- A condo left to a non-qualifying foreigner must be sold within a year, after notifying the authorities within 60 days.
- Land is worse. Section 93 covers a statutory heir only — a legatee named in a will has no route at all.
- Being foreign does not stop you administering an estate. Nationality is not among the disqualifications.
- One year to claim, ten years absolute — but only an heir or the administrator may raise that bar.
Which laws you are actually under
Succession in Thailand is not one statute, and the instinct to look everything up in “the inheritance law” is what produces most of the confusion.
- Civil and Commercial Code, Book VI (Succession), sections 1599–1755. Enacted in 1935 and barely touched since — a handful of sections amended in 1992 and 2005, and exactly three in 2024. Most of what you will read below is the original text.
- Act on Conflict of Laws B.E. 2481, Royal Gazette volume 55, pages 1021–1036, 20 March 1939. Never amended. Four sections of it decide whose law governs your estate, and almost no English guide quotes them.
- Inheritance Tax Act B.E. 2558, volume 132, part 72 Kor, page 1, 5 August 2015, in force 180 days later on 1 February 2016, with ministerial regulations of 2016, 2017 and an amendment in 2025.
- Act Amending the Revenue Code (No. 40) B.E. 2558, published in the same Gazette issue, which created the companion gift tax.
- Land Code, chapter 8 (sections 86–96 ter) and the Condominium Act B.E. 2522 as amended, which decide what a foreign beneficiary may actually hold.
The tax that is supposed not to exist
“Thailand has no inheritance tax” is the most repeated sentence in English-language writing on this subject, and it stopped being true on 1 February 2016. The Act's own explanatory note is blunt about why it was passed: transfers by inheritance were exempt however large, creating unfairness in society.
What matters for a foreigner is that liability turns on nationality and the location of the asset — never on how long you have lived here. Section 11 catches three kinds of person:
| Recipient | Taxed on |
|---|---|
| A person of Thai nationality | Property inside and outside Thailand |
| A natural person not of Thai nationality but holding residence in the Kingdom under the immigration law | Property inside and outside Thailand |
| A person not of Thai nationality who receives property situated in Thailand | Thai property only |
Read the second row carefully. It means residence under the Immigration Act — a residence certificate, permanent residence, the blue book. It does not mean “I have lived in Bangkok for twenty years on retirement extensions.” Almost every long-stay foreigner in Thailand is therefore in the third row, not the second, and is exposed only on Thai-situs assets. The corollary is less comfortable: the third row has no residence element at all, so an heir in Manchester who has never set foot in Thailand is squarely liable on a Thai condominium.
For that third-row person, a ministerial regulation of 2016 defines Thai-situs property exhaustively, and the list is short: immovable property in Thailand; securities issued by a juristic person registered or established under Thai law; deposits held in Thailand; and vehicles registered in Thailand. Four items.
Then the thresholds. The tax is charged per recipient, per deceased, whether received at one time or in instalments, and only on the excess over 100 million baht, after deducting liabilities that came with the inheritance. Above that line the rate is 10 per cent, reduced to 5 per cent only where the recipient is an ascendant or descendant. A sibling, a niece, a friend or an unmarried partner pays the full ten.
And a spouse pays nothing, by a route worth getting right. Section 3(2) says the Act does not apply to what a spouse of the deceased receives. That is not an exemption or a zero rate; the statute simply does not reach it.
The five-asset rule
The most useful single fact in the Act is section 14, which lists what is taxable at all: immovable property; securities under the securities law; deposits or like money the deceased could withdraw or claim from a financial institution or a person holding it; registered vehicles; and further financial assets added by royal decree.
That is the whole list. Gold, banknotes in a safe, jewellery, watches, art, furniture and every unregistered movable are outside the charge. This is the statute's own drafting, not a planning opinion.
Two further mechanics worth knowing. Immovable property is valued at the official appraised value used for land-registration fees, not at market value. And if property was Thai-situs at the moment of death it stays Thai-situs however it later changes form — selling the condominium and remitting the cash does not escape the charge. Filing and payment are due within 150 days of receiving the inheritance that crosses the threshold, and the Act allows payment by instalments over up to five years against security.
One number we will not guarantee. Section 12 requires the 100-million-baht threshold to be reviewed every five years against the consumer price index and reset by royal decree. We found no decree revising it, and the Revenue Department's own list of royal decrees under this Act shows only the instalment decree. So 100 million is the figure in the Act, and the mechanism exists to move it. Check before relying on it for a large estate.
Before there is an estate, there is a divorce
This is the step that English summaries skip, and skipping it makes the arithmetic wrong from the first line. Section 1625 provides that where the deceased was married, the first operation is a wind-up of the marital property under the rules for divorce by mutual consent, taking effect as at the day the marriage ended by that death. Only what is left on the deceased's side of that line is the estate.
So the surviving spouse is paid twice, and the first payment is not inheritance at all:
- Their own personal property was never in the estate to begin with.
- Half the marital property comes off the top, under the divorce rules.
- Then they take a statutory heir's share of whatever remains.
A guide that says “the spouse gets half” has collapsed steps two and three into one. The companion page on ending a marriage in Thailand sets out the property-division rules this section borrows.
The six classes, and the exception nobody prints
Section 1629 says there are six classes of statutory heir, and only six: descendants; father and mother; full-blood brothers and sisters; half-blood brothers and sisters; grandparents; uncles and aunts. A surviving spouse is a statutory heir as well, on the terms in section 1635.
The general rule is that a living class shuts out every class below it. The exception is in section 1630, and it changes outcomes dramatically: where a descendant survives and the father and mother also survive, the parents share as though they were children.
Work that through. A man dies leaving one child, both his parents, and a spouse. The intuitive answer is half to the spouse and half to the child. The Code's answer is that the estate splits four ways — child, father, mother and spouse — because the parents are lifted into the child's class and the spouse takes a child's share alongside them.
The spouse's share is not a constant, and its shape is counterintuitive:
| Who else survives | Spouse takes |
|---|---|
| Descendants (class 1) | A child’s share |
| Full-blood siblings (class 3), or parents (class 2) where there are no descendants | One half |
| Half-siblings (class 4), grandparents (class 5) or uncles and aunts (class 6) | Two thirds |
| None of the six classes | The whole estate |
Note the shape: the spouse does worse against the deceased's parents and full siblings than against more distant relatives.
All of which matters only so far as you leave it to matter, because the table above governs what you have not disposed of. Section 1608 lets a testator exclude a statutory heir outright, by an express declaration made either in the will or in a writing deposited with the competent official — and an heir excluded that way must be clearly identified. Then the section closes with a paragraph that does the same job without naming anyone:
But where a person has made a will disposing of the whole of the estate, all statutory heirs who do not take a benefit under the will are deemed to have been excluded from the inheritance.
Read the trigger precisely, because it is doing all the work: the whole of the estate. A will that disposes of everything leaves nothing for the intestacy table to reach, and the Code says so expressly rather than leaving it to be inferred. A will that disposes of only part leaves the remainder to the statutory heirs in the ordinary way — and an heir who takes a legacy under such a will may still claim their statutory share of the undisposed remainder unless the will provides otherwise. Which is why the residue clause, the dullest sentence in any will, is the one that decides whether the six classes above ever come into play at all.
Three further provisions that decide real cases. An illegitimate child acknowledged by the father, and an adopted child, both count as descendants — which for a foreign man with unregistered children in Thailand is the whole question. Adoption runs one way only: the adopted child inherits from the adopter, but the adopter does not inherit from the adopted child. And section 1628, as rewritten in 2024, provides that spouses who have separated or live apart without a legal divorce do not lose the right to inherit from each other. Read alongside the rule that a signed separation agreement is not a divorce until registered, that means an estranged spouse of many years is still a first-ranking heir.
Making a will that actually works
The Code recognises five forms and no others. The two that matter for most people are the first two.
| Form | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Ordinary written (s.1656) | In writing; dated with day, month and year at the time of making; signed by the testator before at least two witnesses present at the same time, who then and there sign certifying the signature |
| Holograph (s.1657) | The entire text, the date and the signature in the testator’s own hand. No witnesses needed — but no thumbprint, no mark, and nobody else’s handwriting |
| Public document (s.1658) | Declared to the district officer before at least two witnesses; the officer records it, reads it back, and certifies compliance under seal. Can be done outside the office on request |
| Secret document (s.1660) | Signed, sealed, signed across the seal, produced to the district officer and two witnesses with a declaration that it is the will |
| Oral (s.1663) | Only in exceptional circumstances — imminent danger of death, epidemic, war. Lapses one month after another form becomes possible |
Notice what section 1656 does not require: no language, no lawyer, no notary, no registration, no translation. An ordinary written will in English, dated and signed before two witnesses who sign at the same time, satisfies the section on its face.
The mistake that voids a will
Here is the failure mode, and it is worth more attention than the drafting. Section 1653 provides that the writer of the will, and any witness to it, may not take a benefit under it — and nor may their spouses.
People assume the consequence is that the offending gift is struck out and the rest survives. It is not. Section 1705 provides that a will or clause made in contravention of section 1653 — among others — is void.
The practical shape of this. If your partner types your will, or your beneficiary stands as one of the two witnesses, you have not made a slightly defective will. You may have made no will at all, and the estate then passes to the statutory heirs under section 1629 — which is very often precisely the outcome the will existed to prevent. Whoever writes it and whoever witnesses it must be people who take nothing.
The disqualified witnesses are in section 1670: a minor; a person of unsound mind or whom the court has declared quasi-incompetent; and a person who is deaf, or mute, or blind in both eyes. That is three separate disqualifications, not the single “deaf-mute” category that English guides print. Section 1670 is not itself in the list of nullity provisions — a will witnessed by a disqualified person fails instead because the two required witnesses were never validly there.
Finally, section 1668 confirms that the testator need not disclose the contents to the witnesses. That is exactly why an English-language will can be witnessed by Thai speakers who never read a word of it.
Whose law applies — and the trapdoor
The Act on Conflict of Laws has governed this since 1939 and is almost never cited. Four of its sections decide the question:
- Section 37: succession to immovable property follows the law of the place where it is situated. Thai land and Thai condominium units are governed by Thai succession law, full stop, wherever the deceased was domiciled.
- Section 38: for movables — intestate and testate alike — the governing law is that of the deceased's domicile at death. The Bangkok bank account of a British-domiciled expatriate is governed by the law of his domicile, not by section 1629.
- Section 39: capacity to make a will follows the law of nationality at the time of making it.
- Section 40: a person may make a will either in the form prescribed by the law of their nationality or in the form prescribed by the law of the country where the will is made.
Section 40 is the clean answer to “must my Thai will be in a Thai form?” — no. An American in Bangkok may validly execute a will in the form of American law.
And then section 8, which is why people still make Thai wills. Where foreign law governs, if that law is not proved to the satisfaction of the court, the internal law of Siam applies. Foreign law in a Thai court is a matter of evidence. If nobody is in the room to prove English law to the judge's satisfaction, the court applies the Thai rules to those movables after all. The conflict rules may point abroad; the practical burden of proving it points straight back home.
The clause a foreign will most often gets wrong
If your home-country will leaves things in trust — to trustees for your children until they are twenty-five, say — that machinery does not work here. Section 1686 provides that a trust, created directly or indirectly, by will or by any juristic act taking effect during life or after death, has no effect, except by virtue of the provisions of a law for the creation of trusts. Note how wide that is: it catches the living trust as well as the testamentary one.
This is not a technicality about wording. The trust is the standard device in English-language estate planning, and the Code refuses to give it effect over Thai assets. What Book VI offers instead is much narrower: a property manager who may be appointed only for a minor or a person who is incompetent, quasi-incompetent or hospitalised, and whose appointment may not outlast the minority or the incapacity. If your plan for Thai assets depends on a trust, it needs rewriting for Thailand before it is needed rather than after.
The condominium does not survive you
The standard advice runs: a foreigner cannot own land but can own a condominium, so leave them the condominium. The Condominium Act does not agree.
Section 19 lists the only foreigners who may hold a unit — broadly, those with immigration residence, those admitted under the investment-promotion law, certain Thai-registered or BOI-promoted juristic persons, and the category almost everyone actually uses: a foreigner who brings foreign currency into the Kingdom to pay for the unit. That last one is a purchase qualification: the evidence required is a remittance of not less than the price of the unit to be purchased. An heir buys nothing.
Section 19 septem then deals with exactly our case:
A foreigner other than those specified in section 19 who acquires a unit by inheritance — as a statutory heir, as a legatee under a will, or otherwise — must notify the competent official in writing within sixty days of acquiring ownership, and must dispose of the unit within not more than one year from acquiring it.
If they do not, the Director-General of the Department of Lands disposes of it for them, using the compulsory-disposal machinery of the Land Code. And even a qualified foreigner who inherits must shed any units that take the building over its foreign quota, on the same sixty-day and one-year clocks.
A correction worth making while we are here. The foreign quota is not “49% of the units”. Section 19 bis sets it at not more than 49% of the total area of all units in the building, measured as at registration of the condominium. Area, not unit count.
Land is narrower still
Section 93 of the Land Code is usually quoted as the “foreigners get a year to sell inherited land” provision. It says something quite different:
Where a foreigner acquires land by inheritance as a statutory heir, the Minister may permit the acquisition, provided that together with land already held it does not exceed the ceilings in section 87.
Three hard edges in one sentence:
- Statutory heir only. The section does not mention a legatee. A foreigner named in a will has no route under section 93 at all — in pointed contrast to the Condominium Act, which expressly covers legatees.
- It is a discretion, not a right. The Minister may permit.
- The section 87 ceilings are small. One rai for a residence, per family. Ten for industry or agriculture.
The disposal provision people are reaching for is section 94: land a foreigner acquired unlawfully or without permission must be disposed of within a period the Director-General fixes, not less than 180 days and not more than one year, failing which the Director-General has power to dispose of it.
Somebody has to be appointed to move the money
In practice a Thai court appointment is how an estate actually gets administered, and the Code says why. Section 1713 lets an heir, an interested person or the public prosecutor petition for the appointment of an estate administrator where, among other things, a statutory heir or legatee has disappeared, is outside the Kingdom, or is a minor.
A foreign heir living abroad is therefore a listed statutory ground for the petition, not folklore. And the disqualifications in section 1718 are only three: a minor; a person of unsound mind or quasi-incompetent; an undischarged bankrupt. Nationality is not among them. Nothing in Book VI stops a foreigner administering a Thai estate; the constraint that bites is what the property rules let a beneficiary receive, not who may administer.
The administrator's timetable is tight: begin the inventory within fifteen days, complete it within one month before at least two witnesses, and finish the administration and render accounts within one year unless the will, a majority of the heirs or the court fixes another period. They take no remuneration from the estate unless the will or a majority of the heirs allows it. An action about the administration must be brought within five years of its end.
One reassurance in section 1601 that is worth stating plainly: an heir is never liable beyond the estate that came to them. Inheriting in Thailand does not import the deceased's debts into your own pocket.
The clocks
Section 1754 sets out four limitation rules, each running from a different event: an inheritance action within one year of the death or of when the heir knew or should have known of it; a claim under a will within one year of when the legatee knew or should have known of their right; a creditor's claim within one year of when they knew or should have known of the death; and in no case more than ten years from the death.
A different and much shorter clock governs attacking a will rather than claiming under one. An action to set aside a will or a clause of it — on the ground of duress, mistake or fraud — must be brought within three months of the testator’s death, or of the plaintiff learning of the ground, and never later than ten years from the death. Three months, not one year. Confusing the two is how a challenge dies before it is filed. Two related provisions cut the other way: a will procured by duress stands if the testator lived more than a year after being freed from it, and one procured by mistake or fraud stands if the testator did not revoke it within a year of finding out.
Then section 1755, which decides a great many “we found out too late” cases and is almost never printed in English. The one-year bar may be raised only by an heir, by a person entitled to exercise an heir's rights, or by the estate administrator. A stranger sitting on estate property cannot rely on it. If the person resisting your claim is not an heir, the one year may not be their defence to make.
Same-sex spouses and the 2024 amendment
Thailand's marriage-equality amendment came into force on 22 January 2025, and it touched Book VI in exactly three places. That sounds like an oversight until you look at the 1935 drafting: Book VI was already written in the gender-neutral word khu somrot — spouse. Section 1629's spouse paragraph and all four limbs of section 1635 have said “spouse” since 1935. Only three provisions used “husband and wife”, and the 2024 Act replaced those three.
So a same-sex spouse registered under the amended Code inherits on exactly the same terms, and no read-across argument is needed. The same is true of both tax statutes: the Inheritance Tax Act's spouse exclusion and the Revenue Code's gift exemption were both drafted with the neutral word in 2015. See our page on getting married in Thailand for how the registration itself works.
Questions people actually ask
- Do I need a Thai will if I already have one at home?
- For Thai land or a Thai condominium, Thai succession law applies regardless of what your home will says, so the practical question is whether a Thai court can be shown a document it can act on. For movables, your domicile's law governs — but only if somebody proves that law to the court's satisfaction, failing which Thai law applies anyway.
- Does a Thai will revoke my foreign one?
- A later will revokes an earlier one only to the extent they conflict, unless the testator says otherwise. Which is exactly why two wills drafted without reference to each other are dangerous, and why each should say plainly which assets it covers.
- Can I leave my Thai wife the house and land?
- A Thai national inherits Thai land without any of the section 93 problem. The constraint discussed above is about foreign beneficiaries.
- My partner and I are not married. What does she get?
- Nothing as a statutory heir — an unmarried partner is not in any of the six classes, and cohabitation does not create a share. Whatever she receives must come through a will, and at 10 per cent above the threshold rather than the 5 per cent for a descendant.
- Is a will made at the district office safer?
- It is harder to lose and harder to dispute, because the officer records it, reads it back, certifies it under seal and may not disclose it while you live. It is not more valid than an ordinary written will — both are in the statutory list.
- My will at home leaves everything in trust. Does that work here?
- No. Section 1686 says a trust created by will, directly or indirectly, has no effect unless a statute authorises it. Book VI’s substitute is a property manager, available only for a minor or an incapacitated person and only for as long as that lasts.
- Can my children claim a share even if I leave them out?
- If your will disposes of the whole estate, no — section 1608 deems every statutory heir who takes no benefit under it to have been excluded, without your having to name them. If it disposes of only part, the remainder goes down the statutory-heir table in the ordinary way, which is what a residue clause exists to prevent.
- How long do I have to contest a will?
- Three months from the death or from learning of the ground, under section 1710 — and never more than ten years from the death. Do not confuse that with the one-year limit in section 1754, which is for claiming an inheritance, not for attacking a will.
- What about my gold and my watches?
- Outside the inheritance tax entirely. Section 14's list of taxable property does not reach unregistered movables. Who takes them is still decided by the will or by the classes of heir.
How we made this
We are a small English-language reference desk. We are not in Bangkok, we are not Thai lawyers, and we do not draft wills. What we do is read the primary text, in Thai, and write down what it says — particularly where the English-language consensus has drifted from it. Succession is a field where that drift is unusually wide, because Book VI is a 1935 text that most summaries paraphrase from each other rather than from the Code, and because the inheritance tax arrived in 2016 and a great deal of older writing has never been updated.
Where this came from
- Civil and Commercial Code, Book VI (Succession), sections 1599–1755 — the Office of the Council of State consolidated text, read for the classes of heir, the spouse's share, the forms of a will, the nullity provisions, the estate administrator and the limitation periods. Book VI is lightly amended; where a section carries no amendment footnote it is the enacted 1935 text, and we say so where it matters.
- Act Amending the Civil and Commercial Code (No. 24) B.E. 2567 — Royal Gazette volume 141, part 58 Kor, 24 September 2024, in force 22 January 2025, read from the proofread Gazette pages, for the three sections it changes in Book VI and for its general read-across clause. The Royal Gazette's own PDF of this Act is font-scrambled and unusable.
- Civil and Commercial Code sections 1608, 1653, 1670, 1686, 1705, 1710 and 1755 — read in the Thai text and cross-checked against a second independent reading of Book VI, because each is a provision the English-language summaries state incorrectly or omit altogether.
- Act on Conflict of Laws B.E. 2481 — Royal Gazette volume 55, pages 1021–1036, 20 March 1939, read in full. Never amended.
- Inheritance Tax Act B.E. 2558 — volume 132, part 72 Kor, page 1, 5 August 2015, in force 1 February 2016, read in full; together with the Ministerial Regulation prescribing property situated in Thailand B.E. 2559 (volume 133, part 15 Kor, 16 February 2016), the valuation and encumbrance regulations of the same date, the instalment Royal Decree B.E. 2559 (volume 133, part 21 Kor, 4 March 2016) and the exemption regulations B.E. 2560 (volume 134, part 11 Kor, 25 January 2017).
- Act Amending the Revenue Code (No. 40) B.E. 2558 — volume 132, part 72 Kor, page 12, 5 August 2015, read from the proofread Gazette pages for the rewriting of section 42(10) and the new gift exemptions.
- Land Code, chapter 8, sections 86–96 ter — Office of the Council of State consolidated text stamped June 2016; its latest footnoted amendment anywhere is Act No. 13 B.E. 2556, and section 93 carries no amendment footnote at all. Readers should know the text is quoted from a 2016 consolidation.
- Condominium Act B.E. 2522 as amended — the Department of Lands consolidated compilation, read for sections 19, 19 bis, 19 quinque and 19 septem.
What we deliberately left out. No court fees, lawyer's fees or realistic timeline for an administrator petition — the Code prescribes none and we will not invent a tariff. No description of the Civil Procedure Code's rules on petitions, jurisdiction or service abroad, because we read Book VI and not the CPC. Nothing about what a particular bank requires to release a deceased account, which is practice rather than law. No account of Islamic family and succession law in the four southern provinces, which is a separate body of instruments we did not read. No answer on whether Thailand has concluded any inheritance-tax double-taxation agreement — the Act creates the power and we found no notification exercising it. No foreign-country tax consequences, which are a matter for each reader's own jurisdiction. And no assertion that the 100-million-baht threshold is still the operative figure beyond saying that it is the figure in the Act and that a royal decree may revise it.
Town Wire News is an English-language reference desk. This page describes published law; it is not legal advice about your estate, your family or your property, and anybody with land, a business, children from more than one relationship, or assets in more than one country should be talking to somebody who can see the documents. Wills are one of the few areas where a small drafting error is discovered only when it can no longer be fixed. Last verified October 2026 — if something here has moved, please tell us on our corrections page.