Section 702: Mortgage, definition
Statutory text (Thai original)
อันว่าจำนองนั้น คือสัญญาซึ่งบุคคลคนหนึ่ง เรียกว่าผู้จำนอง เอาทรัพย์สินตราไว้แก่บุคคลอีกคนหนึ่ง เรียกว่าผู้รับจำนอง เป็นประกันการชำระหนี้ โดยไม่ส่งมอบทรัพย์สินนั้นให้แก่ผู้รับจำนองผู้รับจำนองชอบที่จะได้รับชำระหนี้จากทรัพย์สินที่จำนองก่อนเจ้าหนี้สามัญ มิพักต้องพิเคราะห์ว่ากรรมสิทธิ์ในทรัพย์สินจะได้โอนไปยังบุคคลภายนอกแล้วหรือหาไม่
Verbatim from the Royal Gazette / Office of the Council of State
English translation
A mortgage is a contract whereby a person, called the mortgagor, assigns a property to another person, called the mortgagee, as security for the performance of an obligation, without delivering the property to the mortgagee. The mortgagee is entitled to be paid out of the mortgaged property in preference to ordinary creditors regardless as to whether or not the ownership of the property has been transferred to a third person.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 702 distinguishes mortgage from pledge (§747): mortgage = security without delivery; pledge = security with delivery. Mortgage applies primarily to immovables (land, condos) and to ships, machinery, and floating houses. Title remains with the mortgagor, the mortgagee gets only a security interest registered against the title. Foreigners can be mortgagees of Thai land (a useful arrangement for foreign lenders financing Thai property purchases), but cannot be mortgagors of land they cannot own.
Why this matters in practice
Lawyers: A mortgage is accessory to the underlying obligation, if the underlying debt is invalid, the mortgage is also invalid (Section 702 read with Section 8905/2551). The mortgagee's priority right follows the property even if it is sold to a third party, making it a real right (right in rem). Laypeople: When you mortgage your land to a bank, you keep possession and can continue using it, but the bank has a registered priority claim over it. If you do not repay, the bank can eventually force a sale of the land.
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. 8905/2551 (2008) ★ Landmark
A mortgage is an accessory obligation to the principal debt it secures. Where the plaintiff pleads that the defendant borrowed and mortgaged to secure that loan, and the evidence shows he never borrowed, the defendant is not liable on the mortgage either - not because the mortgage is void, but because the principal obligation as pleaded does not exist. And where the mortgage in fact secured a third party interest debt, the burden of proving that principal debt lies on the plaintiff: until its amount is established the court cannot give judgment enforcing the accessory mortgage.
The plaintiff sued for 3,500,000 baht said to have been lent to the defendant and secured by a registered mortgage. The defendant denied ever borrowing, saying the mortgage secured only the interest a third party owed the plaintiff. The facts found were that the defendant had deposited the title deed and a signed blank transfer to secure that third party unpaid interest and had never borrowed or received the money claimed. The Supreme Court held the loan pleaded was not made out, so no liability arose under it, and that a mortgage being an accessory to the principal debt the defendant was not liable on the mortgage either. As to the debt the mortgage did secure, the burden of proof lay on the plaintiff, who never proved how much interest the third party owed; with no certain principal sum the court could not enforce the accessory mortgage. The Court of Appeal was reversed and the claim dismissed.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 1587/2555 (2012)
A mortgage extends to all structures existing on the mortgaged land at the time of registration; subsequent separate transfer of the structure does not remove it from the mortgage.
Under Section 718, a mortgage extends to all things attached to the mortgaged property at the time of registration. A house that was attached to the mortgaged land at the time of registration was included within the mortgage, even though the mortgagor subsequently transferred the house separately.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 39 Supreme Court decisions (1962 to 2026)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 3881/2568 (2025)
- Decision 3124/2565 (2022)
- Decision 8437/2561 (2018)
- Decision 14595/2558 (2015)
- Decision 1587/2555 (2012)
- Decision 3617/2554 (2011)
- Decision 110/2553 (2010)
- Decision 8905/2551 (2008)
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
Frequently asked questions
If I mortgage my land to a bank, can I still sell or rent it?
You can rent it out without the bank's consent in most cases, as you retain possession. You can also sell it, but the buyer takes it subject to the mortgage: the bank's registered mortgage right follows the land to the new owner. In practice, banks typically require their consent before any sale or transfer of mortgaged property.
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Civil and Commercial Code, s. 702 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil and Commercial Code (Thailand), s. 702. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-702/ (accessed 28 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.พ.พ. มาตรา 702 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-702/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-702/"><p>A mortgage is a contract whereby a person, called the mortgagor, assigns a property to another person, called the mortgagee, as security for the performance of an obligation, without delivering the property to the mortgagee. The mortgagee is entitled to be paid out of the…</p><footer>Civil and Commercial Code, s. 702 (Thailand): <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-702/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.