Section 1457: Marriage by registration only
Statutory text (Thai original)
การสมรสตามประมวลกฎหมายนี้จะมีได้เฉพาะเมื่อได้จดทะเบียนแล้วเท่านั้น
Verbatim from the Royal Gazette / Office of the Council of State
English translation
Marriage under this Code shall be effected only on registration being made.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 1457 is foundational and frequently surprises foreign couples. A Buddhist temple ceremony, Christian church wedding, or Muslim nikah without amphur registration creates no legal marriage in Thailand, no marital property regime, no automatic inheritance rights, no spousal visa eligibility. The registration is a simple form filed at any District Office with two witnesses. Foreigners need their passport plus an Affirmation of Freedom to Marry from their embassy (legalized at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Why this matters in practice
For lawyers: advise clients that any promise of marriage made in a religious or customary ceremony carries no legal weight until District Office registration is complete. For clients: a Buddhist, Christian, or wrist-tying ceremony does not make you legally married — you must register at the Amphur.
Legislative history
Section 1457 has remained unchanged in substance since Book 5 was revised in B.E. 2519. The Marriage Equality Act (No. 24, B.E. 2567), in force 22 Jan 2025, did not alter the registration requirement but updated related sections to use gender-neutral terms.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 2580/2563 (2020)
Legal spousal status requires registration under §1457; unregistered cohabitation does not create a lawful marriage.
The phrase 'who is not his wife or her husband' in the Criminal Code refers to a lawfully registered spouse under §1457; a couple who have not registered their marriage are not husband and wife for that purpose.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 592/2540 (1997)
Property transferred in a customary ceremony is not a betrothal gift or bride-price where no intention to register exists.
Where the parties agreed to marry by a wrist-tying ceremony and did not intend to register under §1457, property handed over during the ceremony was neither a betrothal gift (khong man) nor bride-price (sin sod) and could not be reclaimed.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 10 Supreme Court decisions (1966 to 2025)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 1541/2568 (2025)
- Decision 8954/2549 (2006)
- Decision 6035/2541 (1998)
- Decision 592/2540 (1997)
- Decision 2159/2517 (1974)
- Decision 2580/2563 (2020)
- Decision 3670/2529 (1986)
- Decision 235/2538 (1995)
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
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. 1457 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil and Commercial Code (Thailand), s. 1457. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1457/ (accessed 8 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.พ.พ. มาตรา 1457 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1457/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1457/"><p>Marriage under this Code shall be effected only on registration being made.</p><footer>Civil and Commercial Code, s. 1457 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1457/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.