Section 1367: Possession, definition
Statutory text (Thai original)
บุคคลใดยึดถือทรัพย์สินโดยเจตนาจะยึดถือเพื่อตน ท่านว่าบุคคลนั้นได้ซึ่งสิทธิครอบครอง
Verbatim from the Royal Gazette / Office of the Council of State
English translation
A person acquires possessory right by holding a property with the intention of holding it for himself
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 1367 separates possession (a factual + intentional state) from ownership (a legal status). A tenant has possession; the landlord has ownership. A thief has possession; the rightful owner has ownership. Possession matters legally because it: (1) is protected against interference by §§1372-1374; (2) ripens into ownership after 10 years (immovables) or 5 years (movables) under the adverse-possession rules of §1382; (3) carries the bona fide-purchaser presumption in §1369. Mere holding without intent to own (e.g., as agent, employee, tenant) is not §1367 possession but "holding for another."
Why this matters in practice
Lawyers: a tenant, licensee, or employee in occupation holds on behalf of the owner and cannot convert that holding into adverse possession without a clear change of intention evidenced externally. Laypersons: simply living on land with the owner's permission does not count as the kind of possession that can ripen into ownership: you need to hold it as if it is yours, openly and without the owner's consent.
Legislative history
Part of the original Civil and Commercial Code codification; no major subsequent amendment.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 12473/2553 (2010)
Possessory right under section 1367 is acquired by holding property with the intention of holding it for oneself, but it cannot be acquired during a statutory period in which transfer of the land is prohibited. A buyer who takes delivery and works the land during that period acquires the possessory right only from the day the prohibition expires, provided he is still in possession then.
Defendant 1 sold the land to P., delivered possession and never became involved with it again, which showed he had abandoned the intention to hold it under section 1377 paragraph one. Although P. bought and worked the land during the statutory transfer-prohibition period, he acquired no possessory right then, being restrained by Land Code section 58 bis. But P. and the plaintiff, who lived together as husband and wife, remained in possession past the end of that period, so the Court held they acquired the possessory right under section 1367 from the day the prohibition expired. Defendant 1 therefore had no possessory right and could not subdivide and transfer the land to defendants 2 to 9. Because the sale contract itself was void as prohibited by law, P. could not compel defendant 1 to register a transfer: his right arose by operation of law.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 8160/2551 (2008)
Physical delivery of land constitutes a valid transfer of possession under section 1367 even where the transfer of title is incomplete for lack of registration.
Defendant 1 sold NS.3 Kor land to the plaintiff in writing but without registration; Defendant 1 delivered possession to the plaintiff who has held it ever since. Although the transfer of right was incomplete for lack of registration, the physical delivery constituted a valid transfer of possession under section 1367.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 113 Supreme Court decisions (1946 to 2025)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 3169/2564 (2021)
- Decision 8887/2563 (2020)
- Decision 1443/2562 (2019)
- Decision 113/2561 (2018)
- Decision 1295/2560 (2017)
- Decision 6157/2558 (2015)
- Decision 10408/2555 (2012)
- Decision 12473/2553 (2010)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Most often cited alongside
- Section 1377 24
- Section 1378 15
- Section 1369 13
- Section 1375 12
- Section 1373 11
- Thai CPC s. 55 11
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Civil and Commercial Code, s. 1367 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil and Commercial Code (Thailand), s. 1367. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1367/ (accessed 28 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.พ.พ. มาตรา 1367 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1367/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1367/"><p>A person acquires possessory right by holding a property with the intention of holding it for himself</p><footer>Civil and Commercial Code, s. 1367 (Thailand): <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1367/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.