Section 1546: Child born outside marriage
Statutory text (Thai original)
เด็กเกิดจากหญิงที่มิได้มีการสมรสกับชาย ให้ถือว่าเป็นบุตรชอบด้วยกฎหมายของหญิงนั้น เว้นแต่จะมีกฎหมายบัญญัติไว้เป็นอย่างอื่น
Verbatim from the Royal Gazette / Office of the Council of State
English translation
A child born of a woman who is not married to a man is deemed to be the legitimate child of such woman.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 1546 is the starting position for unmarried-mother children in Thailand: legally, only the mother is a parent. The biological father has no automatic rights, no parental power, no automatic inheritance claim by the child. To gain legal recognition, the father must use one of the §1547 legitimation routes (marriage to mother, recognition with consent, or court order). Two practical implications: (1) an unmarried foreign father who fathered a Thai-born child has no legal say in the child's upbringing until legitimation; (2) child has no inheritance claim against the father's estate unless legitimated or expressly named in his will.
Why this matters in practice
For lawyers: a child born to an unmarried woman has no legal father until one of the three legitimation routes under §1547 is completed; advise fathers to register paternity promptly if they wish to exercise parental power. For clients: if you are the biological father but were not married to the mother at birth, you must take a formal legal step to establish your legal relationship with your child.
Legislative history
Section 1546 has applied since the B.E. 2519 revision and reflects the principle that maternity is established by birth. The Marriage Equality Act (No. 24, B.E. 2567), in force 22 Jan 2025, does not alter §1546 but affects related provisions on parentage where same-sex married couples are involved.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
-
Supreme Court Judgment No. 3780/2543 (2000)
A child born to a woman not married to the man is the legitimate child of the mother alone under section 1546, so sole parental power rests with her under section 1566 paragraph 1. A father who has not legitimated the child is not a father within section 1566, so an agreement between the parents that the child live with him takes effect neither as a parental agreement under section 1566 paragraph 2(6) nor as any right to fix the child residence under section 1567(1). The mother may withdraw from such an arrangement and demand the child back under section 1567(4), as from any other person holding the child unlawfully.
The parents lived together without registering a marriage and had a son in 1995. When they separated in 1998 they agreed the boy would stay with the father from Monday to Friday and with the mother at weekends. The mother later sued to have him returned. The Supreme Court held the boy is the legitimate child of the mother alone under section 1546, so parental power rests with her alone under section 1566 paragraph 1; the father, not being a father within that section, gained nothing from the agreement, which could not operate under section 1566 paragraph 2(6), and had no right to fix the child residence under section 1567(1). The mother could therefore demand the child back under section 1567(4). The Court added that the father allegation of bad faith was pleaded only as a defence and not as a counterclaim satisfying Civil Procedure Code section 172 paragraph 2, and that by not objecting when evidence was dispensed with he had abandoned it.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 54 Supreme Court decisions (1942 to 2023)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 12502/2558 (2015)
- Decision 3290/2545 (2002) Paternity and Maintenance in Single Action
- Decision 3780/2543 (2000)
- Decision 3484/2542 (1999)
- Decision 4841/2540 (1997)
- Decision 2536/2536 (1993)
- Decision 1048/2526 (1983)
- Decision 326/2524 (1981)
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
-
Plain citation
Civil and Commercial Code, s. 1546 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil and Commercial Code (Thailand), s. 1546. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1546/ (accessed 28 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.พ.พ. มาตรา 1546 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1546/ -
Embed on your site
<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1546/"><p>A child born of a woman who is not married to a man is deemed to be the legitimate child of such woman.</p><footer>Civil and Commercial Code, s. 1546 (Thailand): <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-1546/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.