Child Support in Thailand: How Much Courts Actually Order, and How They Get to the Number

Reviewed by ThaiLawOnline, a licensed Thai law firm practising in Thailand since 2006. Thai lawyer of record: Wichuda Atthamethakon, LL.M., Thai Bar Licence 3149/2556.

Last updated on สิงหาคม 20, 2026

Every English guide to child support in Thailand tells you the same thing: there is no formula, it depends. That is true and useless. Thai courts do reach a number, they reach it the same way every time, and the reasoning sits in one section of the Civil and Commercial Code that almost no competing page quotes. This guide gives you the test the judge applies, a real case with the figure at every instance, the rule that lets a child claim for years already gone, and what happens when the paying parent leaves the country.

The short answer

Thailand has no statutory child support formula. No percentage of income, no state calculator, no published table. Section 1598/38 of the Civil and Commercial Code gives the court three factors and nothing else:

1. the ability of the person who must pay;
2. the condition in life of the child receiving it;
3. the circumstances of the case.

Those three words decide every maintenance case in Thailand. In the leading Supreme Court decision on a foreign father, the mother asked for 50,000 baht a month, the father said he could manage 1,000, and the Supreme Court fixed 10,000. Below you can follow how the courts got there.

What Thai law actually says about child support

Five sections carry the whole subject. Read them in this order and the system makes sense.

ส่วน	What it does
CCC s.1564	Creates the duty. Parents must maintain their children and provide proper education during minority. Paragraph 2 continues the duty for an adult child who is infirm and cannot earn a living.
CCC s.19	Majority at twenty. This is the normal end date of the duty, subject to s.1564 paragraph 2.
CCC s.1598/38	Sets the amount. Maintenance may be claimed where the child has received none or has received too little for their condition in life. The court weighs ability, condition in life, and the circumstances.
CCC s.1598/39	Allows change. On a change in circumstances, means or condition in life, the court may cancel, reduce, increase or re-establish the maintenance.
CCC s.1598/40	Sets the mode. Periodical money payments unless the parties agree or the court orders otherwise. Where there is special reason, the court may order support in another form, including sending the child to a named school at the payer’s expense.
CCC s.1598/41	Protects the right. Maintenance cannot be renounced, transferred or attached, and it is not subject to execution by anyone else’s creditors.

Two competitor pages in this search result cite section 1598/33 as the authority for support outside marriage. That section sits in the adoption title. The maintenance chapter runs from 1598/38 to 1598/41, and everything above comes from it.

How a Thai court gets to a figure: one case, start to finish

คำตัดสินของศาลฎีกา 3290/2545 is the clearest worked example in Thai family law, and we publish the full Thai text of it in our library. A Thai mother and a foreign resident married in an Indian ceremony without registering. Their daughter was born in October 1992. The relationship broke down, the mother moved home to Chonburi with the child, and the father paid nothing and never visited.

The mother sued for two things in one action: an order declaring paternity, and maintenance. DNA testing at Siriraj Hospital established that the defendant was the father. Then the courts went to work on the number.

เวที	รูป
Mother’s demand	50,000 baht per month
Father’s answer	No more than 1,000 baht per month
Court of First Instance	20,000 baht per month until majority
ศาลอุทธรณ์	5,000 for five years, then 6,000 for five years, then 7,000 until majority
ศาลฎีกา	10,000 baht per month, from the date the judgment became final, until majority

The evidence explains the movement. The child was at an international school in India costing 150,000 baht a year, rising to 170,000 in later grades, plus roughly 80,000 baht a year in flights, 30,000 in clothing and 10,000 in incidentals. The father ran a motorcycle dealership, a fabric shop and a tailoring business on Koh Samui. The Supreme Court held that the father alone could not carry the full cost of an education the mother had chosen, and in the same breath held that the Court of Appeal’s stepped schedule was too low. It replaced both with 10,000 baht a month.

One detail matters and our own decision page currently gets it wrong: the Supreme Court ordered payment from the date the judgment became final, not from the child’s birth. Retroactive support arrived fifteen years later, in a different case, which is the next section.

Read the full bilingual judgment: Decision 3290/2545, paternity and maintenance in a single action.

Can you claim for the years already gone?

Yes, if the parents never married and the father is legitimated. This is the single most valuable rule on this page, and no English guide we found covers it.

คำตัดสินของศาลฎีกา 7345/2560 (2017) decided a claim by a child of unmarried parents for 10,000 baht a month from birth to the filing date, a total of 1,720,000 baht. The father argued the claim was time-barred by the five-year prescription for periodical payments in CCC s.193/33(4). The Court of First Instance rejected that argument, holding this was not a claim for maintenance fixed to be paid periodically, and the father failed to preserve the point on appeal, so the prescription ruling stood.

The Supreme Court then decided the two questions that matter for anyone in this position:

• Support runs from birth. Section 1557 once made legitimation effective only from the date of the judgment. The section was amended with effect from 8 March 2008 to make legitimation date back to the child’s birth. A child legitimated after that amendment is treated as legitimate from birth and can therefore claim maintenance from the day they were born, in the same action that asks the court to declare paternity.
• Parents do not split the bill down the middle. The Court of Appeal had cut the trial court’s award of 1,370,000 baht in half, to 685,000, reasoning that both parents are jointly liable in equal shares. The Supreme Court restored the full 1,370,000. Joint liability under s.1564 does not mean identical contributions. Section 1598/38 governs, and it looks at each parent’s ability, not at arithmetic.

For a mother who waited eight years before legitimating the father, that rule is the difference between starting at zero and starting at seven figures.

What the amount depends on in practice

The payer’s real ability, not the payer’s declared income. Courts look at businesses, property and lifestyle, not just a salary slip. คำตัดสินที่ 5123/2556 settles the obvious workaround: a parent who voluntarily reduces their own income does not reduce the obligation.

The child’s established standard of living. International school fees, medical needs and travel all feed the figure. So does the reverse: a court will not order private-school money for a child in a government school.

The shape of the payment. Under s.1598/40 the court is not limited to a flat monthly figure. It can order a stepped schedule that rises as the child ages, as the Court of Appeal did in 3290/2545, and where there is special reason it can direct payment in another form, such as tuition paid to a named institution by the parent who must provide maintenance. If you want school fees paid directly to the school rather than into an ex-partner’s account, ask for it in the pleadings.

More children does not mean multiplying the figure. The test is the payer’s capacity across the whole family, weighed against each child’s needs.

Unmarried parents: no legitimation, no claim against the father

A child born to an unmarried mother is the legitimate child of the mother alone (s.1546). The father owes nothing until he is legitimated, by one of three routes under s.1547: the parents marry afterwards, the father registers the child at the district office, or a court declares paternity.

Two procedural points decide real cases. Section 1556 requires the action to be brought by the child’s statutory representative on the child’s behalf, not by the mother in her own name; the Supreme Court dismissed the mother’s personal claim in 3290/2545 for exactly that reason while allowing the child’s. And section 1557, as amended in 2008, makes legitimation effective from the child’s birth, which is what unlocks the retroactive claim above.

Our guide to the registration route sits here: legitimation and a father’s rights in Thailand. For parental power and who decides where the child lives, see สิทธิในการดูแลบุตรในประเทศไทย.

Child support in a divorce

Section 1522 splits the question in two. In a divorce by mutual consent, the agreement fixes maintenance for the children. In a divorce by court judgment, or where the consent agreement says nothing about it, the court fixes the amount.

Do not read that as permission to settle it privately and forget the court. คำตัดสินที่ 3076/2559 holds that a private child support agreement needs court approval to bind. Section 1598/41 explains why: the right to maintenance belongs to the child and cannot be renounced or transferred. A clause in which a mother waives child support in exchange for keeping the house does not extinguish the child’s claim, and the child can bring it later.

ดู การหย่าร้างในประเทศไทย for the consent route and การหย่าร้างที่มีการโต้แย้ง for the litigated one. Division of assets is a separate exercise, covered in marital property under Thai law.

He is not paying. What now?

A maintenance order is a civil judgment and you enforce it like any other, under the Civil Procedure Code. You apply to the court that gave the judgment for a writ of execution, then work with the Legal Execution Department (กรมบังคับคดี) to garnish wages or bank accounts, or to seize and sell property.

What that means in practice for a foreign payer in Thailand: a Thai employer served with a garnishment order will comply, and a Thai bank account is reachable. A payer with no Thai employer, no Thai account and no Thai asset is a much harder target, which is why the enforcement plan belongs in the case strategy before you file, not after you win. Expect execution to take months rather than weeks, and budget for it. Our page on สิ่งที่ควรรู้ก่อนขึ้นศาลในประเทศไทย sets out the procedural reality.

He left Thailand. Can I still collect?

Start with the fact that every competitor page gets wrong or dodges. Thailand is not a Contracting Party to the Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. The HCCH status table for that Convention lists 56 Contracting Parties as at its last update on 30 June 2025, and Thailand does not appear on it. There is no treaty channel, no central authority, no automatic registration of a Thai order abroad.

What works instead is comity. A court in the payer’s home country may recognise and enforce a Thai maintenance judgment under its own rules on foreign judgments. Whether it does turns almost entirely on the Thai proceeding: did the Thai court have jurisdiction over the defendant, was he properly served, did he have a real chance to be heard. คำตัดสินที่ 3810/2552 confirms that Thai courts take jurisdiction over an absent foreign parent, and a clean record on service and participation is what makes later recognition possible.

The practical lesson is unglamorous. Build the file for a foreign judge you will never meet: proper service, certified translations, a reasoned judgment, and a payment history. That file is your asset if the payer moves to a jurisdiction that will hear you.

Changing an order that already exists

Section 1598/39 lets either parent return to court when circumstances, means or condition in life change. The court may cancel, reduce, increase or re-establish the maintenance. คำตัดสินที่ 1218/2567 (2024) applies it to the situation nobody plans for: the child moves permanently to the other parent, and the support order is recalculated to match.

Two cautions. Losing a job is a change in circumstances; choosing to earn less is not, per 5123/2556. And an order stays in force until a court varies it. Arrears accrue in the meantime, so file the application rather than paying less and explaining later.

What this costs with us

An initial consultation is 2,000 THB per hour with a bilingual Thai-licensed attorney, and it includes a written fee estimate before any work starts. Divorce by mutual consent, where the agreement covers custody and support, is a fixed 9,900 THB including registration at the district office. Child custody and support work through the Juvenile and Family Court is quoted after the consultation, because the route and the opponent decide the workload. Contested litigation starts at 70,000 THB. Court filing fees are a government disbursement charged at cost, normally 2% of the amount claimed and capped at 200,000 THB. Full list on our หน้าแสดงราคา.

จองคิวปรึกษา if you want the figure in your own case assessed against the three factors above rather than against a number you read on a forum.

คำถามที่พบบ่อย

Where to go next

• การดูแลบุตรในประเทศไทย, for parental power and who decides
• Legitimation and a father’s rights, the step that creates the duty
• การหย่าร้างในประเทศไทย และ what a divorce costs
• Travel permits for children, when one parent takes the child abroad
• The full Thai family law guide

ThaiLawOnline has advised foreign residents and international families in Thailand since 2006. Statutory references are to the Civil and Commercial Code; the Supreme Court decisions cited are published in full Thai text in our ห้องสมุดกฎหมายไทย. This guide is information, not legal advice on your matter.