The Thai Will Foreign Property Owners Still Don't Have (And Why It's a 7-Figure Mistake)

Most foreign property buyers in Thailand have a will. Almost none have a Thai will. That gap — between the global will sitting in a London or Sydney lawyer's drawer and the Thai-jurisdiction document the Bangkok civil court actually wants — is the cleanest 7-figure mistake in Thai property. It costs roughly 25,000 THB to fix in life, and 5,000,000+ THB to fix after death. This is the math, the statute, and the fix.

The will most foreign owners think covers Thailand — but doesn't

The conversation in 2026 goes the same way every week. A French retiree in Hua Hin, a British entrepreneur with a Sukhumvit condo, a Russian villa-owner in Phuket — each one already has a will from their home country. They assume that document, plus a death certificate, plus a polite letter from their lawyer, is enough to transfer their Thai condo to their kids. It is not.

Section 37 of Thailand's Conflict of Laws Act B.E. 2481 is unambiguous: for immovable property located in Thailand, succession is governed by Thai law. A foreign will may be admitted, but it must satisfy both home-country form rules and Thai legal requirements — and Section 41 of the same Act lets a Thai court apply Thai domicile rules if the deceased had been living here long-term. For LTR-visa holders or 10-year retirees, "accidental Thai domicile" is now the assumption, not the exception.

What that means in practice: the home-country will gets translated, apostilled, embassy-stamped, MFA-legalized, and submitted as evidence. The Thai court then runs its own probate, applies its own Section 1629 hierarchy where the foreign will conflicts with Thai public policy, and the timeline stretches from 6 to 18 months for an uncontested case, longer if anyone objects. The "I have a will" reassurance buys almost nothing in the room where it matters.

If you've already read our companion piece on what happens when a foreign owner dies in Thailand, this article is the contrarian sequel: the specific document gap, the specific cost of leaving it open, and why the gap is bigger in 2026 than it was five years ago.

What Thai statute actually does when you die intestate

Book VI of the Thai Civil and Commercial Code (CCC) governs succession. Civil law tradition: precise, prescriptive, and unforgiving when the rules are skipped. Section 1620 is the trigger — without a valid will, the estate flows to the statutory heirs in Section 1629. There are six classes:

Section 1630 says higher classes block lower classes completely. The surviving spouse sits outside this hierarchy under Section 1635, but only after the marital community property ("Sin Somros") is split 50/50 per Section 1625. The remaining half is what enters the estate pool.

The under-appreciated detail: when a deceased is survived by both children and parents, parents take a child's share — meaning a widower with two kids and two living parents in his home country sees the Thai condo split five ways. Selling that condo now requires consent from all five heirs, three of whom may live on a different continent and need to fly in for Land Department appearances. Practical control collapses long before the legal title transfers.

The 60-day / 1-year condominium trap (Section 19/7)

Foreign condo ownership is governed by the Condominium Act B.E. 2522, which sits as lex specialis on top of the CCC — its rules override general inheritance law. Section 19 caps foreign ownership in any single building at 49% of the saleable floor area. To qualify, foreigners must usually fall under Section 19(5): money brought into Thailand as foreign currency, evidenced by a Foreign Exchange Transaction form (the "Thor Tor 3" or FET).

Inheritance does not pause this rule. Sections 19/5 and 19/7 of the Act impose a strict obligation on any foreign heir:

• Notify the Land Office in writing within 60 days of the death.
• If the heir cannot personally qualify under Section 19, or if the building's 49% foreign quota is full at the time of death, the heir must sell the unit within one year.
• If the unit is not sold within one year, the Director-General of the Land Department has the legal authority to sell it on the heir's behalf — keeping a 5% disposition fee and settling all taxes before remitting the balance.

The Director-General sale is the worst possible exit. Government-mandated dispositions are typically priced 15–25% under fair market — there is no incentive to negotiate, no broker working for the seller, and the buyer pool knows the clock is ticking. We have seen 2026 cases in Phuket and Bangkok where the gap between probate-end and the 12-month divestiture deadline was less than three months — meaning the heirs effectively had a fire-sale window from day one.

A Thai will does not change Section 19/7's existence. What it does is collapse the upstream timeline: a will-named executor can file probate in week one instead of month six, freeing 9-10 months of marketing runway before the divestiture clock matters. That alone is often the difference between a market sale and a forced disposition.

Why your "99-year leasehold" probably dies with you

The 2026 Supreme Court has been even rougher on leasehold structures. In Judgment No. 11058/2559 (followed by 4655/2566), the Court reaffirmed that a Thai lease is a personal right of the lessee, not a property interest — meaning the lease automatically terminates on death unless the contract contains a written succession clause and the landlord agrees to re-register with the heir.

The 4655/2566 decision went further: lease terms exceeding 30 years (the statutory maximum under CCC §540) are void for the excess period. Marketing brochures that promise "99-year leases" or "30 + 30 + 30 with auto-renewal" are now legally unenforceable for years 31-99. The renewal promises are sales material, not contract terms a court will enforce.

Stack the death-termination rule on top of the auto-renewal-void rule, and the typical foreign-leaseholder estate looks like this:

This is the leasehold equivalent of the condo Section 19/7 trap, but worse — at least with a freehold condo, the heir's failure mode is a forced sale at a discount. With leasehold, the failure mode is the unit reverting to the landlord with zero compensation. (See our breakdown of leasehold vs freehold land for the full structural comparison.)

The 7-figure math: a 25M THB Phuket villa worked example

Take a representative 2026 case. A Russian property owner in Phuket dies at 64 with a 25 million THB villa held under a leasehold-plus-Thai-company structure. He has a UK will leaving everything to his two adult children. He has no Thai will. The villa lease has no succession clause. His Thai company has no transfer-on-death plan.

Here is what the heirs actually pay, line by line, against the cost of having drafted a Thai will and updated the lease while alive:

And the case above assumes the heirs win probate cleanly. Add in a contested estate (children from two marriages, half-siblings, common with the demographic) and probate fees alone can hit 2 million THB before the asset side of the math even starts.

Inheritance tax 2026: the 100M THB line and who actually pays

The Inheritance Tax Act B.E. 2558 applies above a 100 million THB net-value threshold per decedent. For most expat estates that is well above the assessable line, but the rate structure is worth knowing because the differential between spouse and unmarried partner is the entire point of getting the will right.

Supreme Court Judgment No. 2656/2567 (2024-25) clarified that inheritance is deemed received at the moment of death, regardless of when the heir actually accesses the funds. This matters for valuation: bank balances are taxed including interest accrued to the date of death; securities are valued at the death-date close; real estate is valued using government appraised value or fair market at the date of death. Time spent fighting probate does not pause the tax basis.

For LTR-visa holders or anyone who has been a Thai tax resident for many years, there is a separate domicile risk: the Revenue Department may assert that the deceased was Thai-domiciled, in which case the 100M threshold applies to global assets, not just Thai-situs ones. Double Tax Agreements often mitigate this, but only if the heirs and the home-country estate know to invoke them — which they will not unless an estate plan makes it explicit.

Unmarried partners: zero statutory rights, full eviction risk

Thai law does not recognize common-law marriage or de facto partnerships. Sections 1629 and 1635 of the CCC are exhaustive — if your partner is not a registered spouse, they are not on the heir list. They get nothing. Length of relationship, joint children, joint mortgage payments, joint Thai bank accounts: none of it creates statutory inheritance rights.

The pattern we see in 2026: a foreign retiree dies in Chiang Mai after 12 years with a Thai partner who is not on the chanote and was never registered as a spouse. The home-country children inherit by Thai statute, fly in three months later, and the partner — still living in the house — has 30 days to leave. There is no legal route to challenge the eviction. A 25,000 THB will naming the partner as legatee for the right to occupy the house for life would have prevented the entire situation.

This is not a niche risk. It is the most common adverse outcome of intestacy among the long-term-expatriate demographic, and the one with the highest emotional weight. The legal fix is trivially cheap. The cost of skipping it is a person being put on the street.

The fix: what a compliant Thai will costs and contains

A Thai will under the CCC has four legal forms. For most foreigners, only two are practical:

• Ordinary Will (CCC §1656) — written, dated, signed before two adult Thai-resident witnesses present at the same time. Most popular form for foreigners. Bilingual Thai-English drafting is standard. Cost: 10,000–30,000 THB for a simple estate, 30,000–80,000 THB for one with company structures or multi-jurisdictional assets.
• Public Document Will (CCC §1658) — recorded at the local Amphur (district office) by a government official. Highest contest resistance because the testator's capacity is documented by a public officer. Adds a registration fee of around 200 THB. Strongly recommended for anyone with adult children from multiple relationships or anyone leaving assets to an unmarried partner.

What a competent 2026 Thai will actually contains:

• A limited jurisdiction clause: this will applies only to Thai-situs assets. Prevents accidental revocation of the home-country will.
• Named Thai-resident estate administrator (often a local lawyer): can file probate immediately without waiting for foreign heirs to fly in.
• Asset schedule listing chanote numbers, condo unit IDs, Thai bank accounts, FET form locations, Thai-licensed crypto exchange accounts.
• For leasehold properties: instruction to the executor to negotiate lease succession with the landlord during the probate window.
• For unmarried partners: specific bequest of right to occupy the residence, plus liquid funds to cover ongoing CAM fees and taxes.
• Tax planning notes on the 100M THB threshold if applicable, with reference to home-country DTA articles.

The total time investment is one afternoon with a Thai-licensed estate lawyer plus one trip to the Amphur. The total cost is between two and three weeks of CAM fees on a typical Bangkok condo. The fix is not complicated — it is just neglected.

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