Inheritance of Thai property and wills
Everyone puts this one off, and I understand why. But treat it the way you treat insurance or a power of attorney: a piece of ordinary household admin with a known cost and a known benefit. One document, a couple of days, a clear fee, and your family is spared months of correspondence in a country they do not know. Here is what passes, what happens if you leave it, and what to prepare.
What actually passes to your heirs
Everything you hold in Thailand: a condominium held in freehold, rights under a leasehold contract, shares in a Thai company, bank accounts, vehicles. None of it disappears and none of it reverts to the state. The question is never whether your family gets it. The question is how long it takes them and how much of it they spend getting there.
A freehold apartment is the cleanest case. Your name is on the Land Department register, the title has no expiry, and it passes to your heirs as an asset. There is no separate foreign inheritance regime to worry about and no risk of the unit falling outside the building's foreign quota because it changed hands within a family.
One nuance matters more than most people are told: for a foreign heir, eligibility is not automatic. Under the Condominium Act a foreign heir may keep the apartment if they themselves fall within one of the qualifying grounds in section 19 and the building's 49% foreign quota is not exceeded. An heir who does not qualify must notify the competent official in writing within 60 days and dispose of the unit within one year of acquiring ownership; if they do not, the Land Department may sell it.
Apartment, land and lease are inherited under different rules
This is the point that most often gets compressed into one sentence and then costs money. A freehold condominium and the land under a villa sit under different statutes with different consequences.
- Freehold apartment. A qualifying foreign heir may keep it, within the 49% quota. A non-qualifying heir has 60 days to notify and one year to sell.
- Land, and the villa on it. The Land Code does not lift the prohibition. A foreign heir must dispose of the land within a period set by the Director-General of the Department of Lands — not less than 180 days and not more than one year.
- Leasehold. It passes only within the remaining term and only where the contract provides for it. The clock does not reset: if twenty-two years of thirty have run, your heir receives eight.
- Inheritance tax. Thailand has one, but the threshold is high: THB 100 million per heir, with tax only on the excess. The rate is 5% for ascendants and descendants and 10% for others; a spouse is exempt.
Leasehold works slightly differently
A registered lease is inherited within the remaining term of the contract, and it needs its own separate registration step. It is not the same operation as inheriting an apartment you own outright, and it is the single point I most often find missing from a will drafted abroad.
This is one of the quieter reasons the freehold versus leasehold choice matters beyond the price. I set out the rest of that comparison in freehold or leasehold in Phuket, and the registration mechanics in registering a land lease in Thailand.
What happens if there is no will
Thai law has a clear statutory order of heirs: descendants, parents, full siblings, half siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Heirs in the same class share equally, and a later class receives nothing while an earlier class exists. The spouse's share depends on which class they are sharing with.
There is nothing sinister about this. It is a default, and for a straightforward family it often lands roughly where you would have wanted it anyway. The reason to write a will is that defaults are not tailored. If your family situation has any complexity at all, or you hold assets across several countries, the statutory distribution may not match what you had in mind, and by then nobody can ask you.
Why the will is better made in Thailand
A will drawn up abroad has to be legalised before it can be used here, and it almost never contains the things a Thai probate actually needs: a schedule of the specific local assets, a named estate administrator, and where relevant a guardian.
A Thai will is usually a simple written document signed before witnesses with a lawyer. It is drafted in a language the testator understands, and in practice most are written in English and translated into Thai when the time comes to use them. It does not replace your will at home. It sits alongside it and covers the Thai assets specifically.
The one thing to get right is that the two documents do not contradict each other. A competent lawyer will word the Thai will so that it is expressly limited to the Thai estate, and will ask to see what your will at home says. That is a ten-minute conversation, and it is the difference between two documents that work together and two that give your family an argument.
On timing: this is usually one meeting to give instructions and a second to sign. People who put it off for years are generally imagining something far larger than it is.
What an owner should have in place
- A Thai will listing the local assets and naming an estate administrator
- A check that the leasehold is correctly reflected in it, if the property is held on a lease
- Separate thought given to company shares, if the asset sits inside a Thai company
- The documents kept together in one place: the title deed, the purchase contract, the bank confirmations of the inbound funds
- Somebody close to you who knows where those documents are and which lawyer to call
That last line is the one people skip, and it costs more than all the others combined. A perfect will nobody can find is not much use.
The other document people forget
A power of attorney to sell the property without you being physically present. This is not only an inheritance matter. Life moves, schedules change, and flying to Phuket for a single signature at the Land Department is expensive and not always possible. Buyers who arranged this at purchase are generally glad they did. I cover how a sale runs in selling property in Thailand.
Where this sits in the cost of ownership
A Thai will is a one-off item with a modest, quotable fee, and it belongs in the same mental column as your building fees and your insurance rather than in the column marked difficult. If you are mapping out what ownership costs you year to year, it is in the cost of owning property in Thailand.
In short
Arranging this in advance is far simpler and far cheaper than resolving it through a court afterwards. It is not a service I sell, and I have no interest in it beyond the obvious one: this is a lawyer's job, and I have lawyers I hand it to. I raise it with every owner I work with because it is one of the few cases where warning somebody costs almost nothing and not warning them costs a great deal.
This is housekeeping, not a difficult subject. You already do the same thing at home with insurance and with a power of attorney, and this is the same instinct applied to the asset you happen to own in Thailand. One appointment, a short document, a fee you will know in advance, and the matter is closed for years. I mention it to every client once, point them at a lawyer, and that is the end of it. The only version of this that ever becomes painful is the version nobody arranged.
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I am an investment strategist: I select the property, calculate the net return, check the developer and run the transaction. Anything that needs a legal, immigration or tax qualification goes to specialists I have worked with for years.
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Frequently asked
Does a foreigner need a will in Thailand?
Is a leasehold inherited in Thailand?
Is a will made in another country valid in Thailand?
Can a foreigner inherit a condo in Thailand and keep it?
Can a foreigner inherit land in Thailand?
Lyubov Fortunova
Investment strategist and founder of Fortunova Capital Group. I have lived on Phuket for more than five years and run every deal myself: I select the property, calculate the net return, check the developer and hold the process together until the keys are handed over. Lawyers, visa and tax specialists come from my own circle.
“I count net, not dreams”
Could you point me to a lawyer for a Thai will and tell me what it would cover for my apartment?
I answer personally, within the working day, in any time zone. No calls unless you want them. A question about the article is free and commits you to nothing.
