Inheritance and wills

Strictly, no - a foreign will can be recognised in Thailand after translation, legalisation and certification. Practically, yes: probate here runs through a Thai court whatever the will's origin, and a Thai-law will the court can read and apply directly saves your heirs months of translation and authentication friction at the worst possible time.

The standard form for foreign owners is simple: a written will, dated and signed by the testator before two witnesses who sign at the same time - no notary involved. The classic failure is also simple: a beneficiary, or a beneficiary's spouse, acting as witness voids the gift in their favour. Name an executor and a backup, give the will a territorial clause confining it to Thai assets, and keep your home-country will pointed everywhere else, so the two documents can never argue.

The Civil and Commercial Code decides for you, in six fixed classes: descendants first, then parents, full siblings, half-siblings, grandparents, and finally uncles and aunts - each class inheriting only when the previous one is empty. A surviving spouse stands outside the classes and takes alongside whichever is called: a child-equal share with your children, half the estate with parents or siblings, more with remoter relatives, everything if none exist. Before any of that, the spouse's own half of marital property is carved out - it was never part of the estate.

The procedural reality bites harder than the percentages: banks, the Land Department and registrars act only on a Thai court order confirming an executor or appointing an administrator. Even uncontested estates take months, longer when documents need translating and legalising from abroad. Intestacy does not change who must do that work - it just removes your voice from the outcome.

They can inherit it - a will or intestacy decides who. Whether they can register and keep it is a separate question, because the Condominium Act's foreign-ownership conditions apply to the heir personally, not to the estate. The heir must fit a qualifying category - and on the conservative reading we plan around, an heir relying on the imported-capital route must evidence their own qualifying remittance from abroad, at least matching the unit's appraised value; the FET paperwork from your original purchase does not transfer to them. The building's 49% quota must also have room at the moment of inheritance - a will does not reserve quota.

An heir who cannot qualify, or who meets a full quota, faces statutory deadlines: written notice to the authorities within 60 days of acquiring ownership, and disposal of the unit within one year - with the clock running from the inheritance, not from when the heir learned of it. The planning consequence is unglamorous but real: check your intended heirs' position now, while you can still restructure, and leave them a paper map - title deed, FET originals, juristic person contacts - rather than a puzzle.

Half-yes, and the half matters. A foreigner - most commonly the surviving spouse of a Thai owner - can lawfully inherit land as a statutory heir. What they cannot do is keep it: the Land Code's ownership bar applies, the land cannot be registered in the foreign heir's name, and it must be sold or transferred to a Thai person within roughly one year. Miss the deadline and the Land Department can dispose of it compulsorily and hand over the proceeds.

The estate-planning move is to break the property into its legal parts, because they travel differently. The house is a separate object from the land - a foreign heir can inherit and keep a villa even where the plot beneath it must go. A condo passes within the quota rules above. And a Thai owner who wants a foreign partner protected should act in life, not in the will: a registered lifetime usufruct or a long lease in the foreigner's favour survives the owner's death and secures residence regardless of where the land title ends up - paired with a will steering the land itself to Thai heirs.

By default, they end with you. Thai courts treat a lease as personal to the tenant: without an express succession clause in the contract - recognised by the courts, but only if actually drafted in, with re-registration at the Land Office - the remaining years simply lapse, and a family that paid for three decades can lose twenty-five of them in an afternoon. A usufruct is harsher still: it extinguishes automatically at the holder's death, cannot be bequeathed, and no clause can change that - its value is lifetime use, not legacy.

The inheritable exception is the superficies: granted for a fixed term, it is transferable and passes to heirs unless the agreement says otherwise, which is precisely why the lease-plus-superficies structure described in our leasehold guide is the robust choice for a family villa. The pattern across all three rights is the same and worth stating plainly: in Thailand, succession is engineered at signing or not at all.