You paid the reservation fee. You picked the unit. Then the sales office called: the foreign quota is full. This page is for that moment. It sets out the five legal options a foreign buyer has in Thailand when a condo’s 49% foreign quota is exhausted. They’re ranked from lowest risk to highest, with the statute behind each one.

Short answer. When the foreign quota is full, the Land Office will not register the unit in your name (Condominium Act B.E. 2522, Section 19 quater). You have five options. (1) Walk away and recover your reservation fee. (2) Move to a unit or building that still has quota. (3) Register a 30-year lease. (4) Buy in a Thai spouse’s name. (5) Buy through a real Thai-majority company. Options 1 and 2 are low risk. Option 3 is medium. Options 4 and 5 carry real legal and financial exposure. Nothing else on offer (joint ownership with a Thai, “30+30+30” leases, a promised 75% quota) actually works.

We’ve handled this call many times while advising foreign clients in Thailand since 2006. The buyer is usually a few days into a transaction and under pressure to “just sign the lease version”. Don’t. Read this first. It takes ten minutes, and it can save you from paying for a unit you never legally own.

Why the Foreign Quota Is Full and What That Means for Your Transaction

The 49% rule in one paragraph

Section 19 bis of the Condominium Act B.E. 2522 caps foreign ownership at 49% of the total floor area of all units in a building. Not 49% of the units. Floor area. A building with 100 identical units can have 49 foreign-owned units. A building where foreigners bought all the big penthouses may hit the cap at 35 units.

The quota is checked at every transfer. Section 19 ter requires a foreign buyer to present proof of eligibility (usually the Foreign Exchange Transaction form for money brought into Thailand). Section 19 quater then tells the Land Office official to check the foreign ratio. If your unit would push the building over 49%, the official refuses to register. There’s no discretion and no appeal to the developer’s goodwill.

Statutory basis: Condominium Act B.E. 2522 (as amended by Act No. 4, B.E. 2551), Sections 19, 19 bis, 19 ter and 19 quater. Section 19(5) is the ground most foreign buyers rely on: an alien who brings foreign currency into the Kingdom to pay for the unit.

How buyers end up here

Three patterns cover almost every case we see.

The first is the popular new project. The developer sells foreign quota fast, and the last foreign units go before the sales team updates their spreadsheet. You reserved a unit that was already gone.

The second is the resale where nobody checked. The seller is Thai and the agent assumed the unit was “in Thai quota”. Nobody asked the juristic person office whether the foreign side of the building was already full. A Thai seller’s unit does not come with foreign quota attached. Quota belongs to the building, not the unit.

The third is the building that is technically over quota. This happens when the juristic person’s records are stale or when the Land Office used a different floor-area figure. In that case you can’t buy freehold at all until units move back to Thai hands.

What you must do in the next 48 hours

Get the foreign quota position in writing from the condominium juristic person, not from the sales office. Ask for the letter the juristic person issues for transfers. It states the foreign-owned area as of that date. Compare the remaining quota with the floor area of your unit. If adding your unit would take foreign ownership above 49%, the Land Office will not register the transfer. Then read the five options below before you sign anything new.

Option 1: Walk Away and Recover Your Reservation Fee Lowest risk

This is the cleanest exit. It’s also the one buyers underuse, because the sales office presents the lease as the only alternative. It isn’t.

Your legal footing under the Civil and Commercial Code

A reservation fee is usually treated as earnest money. Section 377 of the Civil and Commercial Code makes earnest evidence that a contract was concluded. Section 378 then splits the outcomes. If the buyer defaults, the earnest is forfeited. If performance becomes impossible because of something the seller is responsible for, the earnest must be returned.

If the seller promised a foreign freehold transfer, but the unit cannot be registered because the quota is unavailable, Section 378 supports return of the earnest money when the seller cannot perform for a reason for which the seller is responsible. The contract wording and what each party knew still matter. In our experience, a letter citing the section and attaching the juristic person’s quota letter often produces a refund without court proceedings.

Developer sales: the OCPB reservation rules since 31 January 2025

If you reserved directly from a developer, you have a second layer of protection. The Contract Committee of the Office of the Consumer Protection Board made condominium reservation sales a contract-controlled business. The notification was published on 3 October 2024 and took effect on 31 January 2025.

Under those rules, a developer may keep the reservation fee only when the buyer fails to sign the sale contract within the agreed period. If the developer is the one who can’t perform, refunds are due within 15 days for cash or bank transfer. Credit card payments must be refunded within 45 days. The rules also void clauses that let developers confiscate the fee when the buyer is not at fault. A full quota is not the buyer’s fault.

Two limits. The notification covers business operators selling by reservation. It doesn’t cover a private resale from an individual owner. And it doesn’t name “foreign quota” as a termination ground, so you’ll pair it with Section 378 and the developer’s own representations about foreign eligibility.

Private resales and agents

Resale deposits sit under the Code alone. Check what you signed. Did the reservation form say the unit was available to a foreign buyer? Did the listing say “foreign quota”? Then you have a misrepresentation point as well as Section 378. If the form says nothing about foreign eligibility and you never asked, the argument gets harder. Even then, most sellers return the deposit rather than litigate over a sale that can never close.

Risk assessment: Low relative to proceeding with a defective purchase. Many claims settle after a written demand, but a disputed refund can require an OCPB complaint or court proceedings. Do not assume recovery will take only a few weeks.

Option 2: Move to a Unit or Building With Quota Left Low risk

Still want this project or this neighbourhood? The second option keeps your deal alive without changing its legal nature. You stay a freehold buyer. You just change the unit.

Swapping units inside the same project

Large developers often hold back some foreign quota for later phases or for unsold stock. Ask, in writing, whether any unit remains in foreign quota and whether your reservation fee can be transferred to it. Get the juristic person’s quota letter for the new unit before you agree. Don’t accept the sales team’s verbal “yes, that one is fine”.

Waiting for quota to reopen, safely

Quota is not static. It frees up every time a foreign-owned unit is sold to a Thai national or a company that qualifies as Thai for condominium ownership. In mature buildings that happens a few times a year. In a new building where every foreign unit was just bought by an investor, it may not happen for years.

Waiting is fine only if the paperwork protects you. Three points matter:

1. Your sale and purchase agreement must make your payment obligations conditional on foreign quota being available at the transfer date. If quota isn’t available, the contract ends and all payments come back. This is a condition precedent, a concept common-law buyers already know.
2. Don’t pay more than the reservation fee while you wait. Instalments paid against a unit you may never register leave you with an unsecured claim against the seller.
3. Set a long-stop date. If quota hasn’t reopened by that date, you get your money back and walk.

Some developers offer a “quota waiting list”. Unless its terms are incorporated into a binding contract, priority on the list is a courtesy, not a legal right. Treat an informal list as a hope, not a plan.

Changing building

Quota shortages are concentrated in a small number of buildings that market heavily to foreigners. The building across the street often has 20% foreign ownership and no shortage at all. If your goal is a home rather than that specific tower, this is the fastest way back to a freehold title. Our guide to buying a condominium in Thailand covers the full due diligence sequence.

Risk assessment: Low, provided the new unit’s quota is confirmed by the juristic person and any waiting arrangement is conditional. You end up where you wanted to be: a foreigner with a registered title.

Option 3: Register a 30-Year Leasehold on the Unit Medium risk

This is the option every sales office offers first, because it lets them keep the sale. It is legal. It is also a completely different product from what you reserved. You need to understand what you’re giving up.

What a leasehold condo actually is

A lease is a contract, not ownership. Section 540 of the Civil and Commercial Code caps a lease of immovable property at 30 years. Section 538 requires a lease over three years to be registered at the Land Office, otherwise it’s only enforceable for three years. A registered lease does not consume foreign quota because the Thai owner stays on the title.

For a Canadian or American reader, the closest analogy is a long-term ground lease rather than a condominium title. You have exclusive possession for a term. You don’t own the asset. When the term ends, the unit goes back to the owner.

The renewal problem after Supreme Court Decision No. 4655/2566

Developers and sellers love to say “30 years plus two renewals”. That wording does not create a registered 90-year lease. In Decision No. 4655/2566, the parties signed a 30-year lease and two further 30-year extensions on the same day, and the tenant paid for all 90 years at the outset. The Supreme Court held that the extensions were void because the arrangement was intended to evade the 30-year limit in Section 540. The decision does not say every renewal promise is automatically void, but any promise remains contractual and should not be treated as a property right binding a later owner.

The practical result is simple. Value the lease at 30 years. If the seller adds renewal language, do not price it as a registered right to another 60 years. Our article on the 90-year lease myth in Thailand explains why “30+30+30” fails.

What to negotiate instead

A leasehold can be a sensible choice for a retiree. It suits someone who wants a home for life and doesn’t care about resale. It’s a poor choice for an investor. If you go this route, the lease must be registered. It should also include:

1. A right to sublet and to assign the lease without the owner’s consent. Section 544 of the Code otherwise prevents subletting or transfer of the lease unless the agreement permits it.
2. Clear wording acknowledging that the registered lease survives a transfer under Section 569. Do not assume that separate personal promises by the original owner will bind a later buyer.
3. A written option to buy the unit freehold if foreign quota becomes available during the term, with a fixed price or formula and clear transfer mechanics.
4. A reduced price. A 30-year lease is worth less than freehold. In our experience the market discount is real, and so is the resale difficulty. Don’t pay the freehold price for a lease.

Money in, money out

A lease payment made in one lump sum is still rent in law. There’s no FET requirement because you aren’t registering ownership. But when you leave Thailand, remitting the proceeds of an assigned lease can be harder than remitting a freehold sale. Banks look for the original inward remittance record. Keep every document. Our FET form guide explains the paper trail.

Risk assessment: Medium. The structure is legal and registered. The risks are commercial: no ownership, a hard 30-year horizon, lower resale value, and renewal language that creates no registered right to another term. Acceptable for a long-term residence, questionable as an investment.

Option 4: Buy in Your Thai Spouse’s Name Medium to high risk

If you’re married to a Thai national, your spouse can buy the unit in the Thai quota. It’s lawful. It’s also a decision about your marriage and your estate, not just about property. Or you can also buy in your Thai girlfriend name and register a right like usufruct, lease, mortgage, sap-ing-sith or more.

The Land Office declaration

The Land Department Regulations on Ownership of Condominium Units by Foreigners and Foreign Juristic Persons B.E. 2547, particularly clauses 20 and 21, govern this situation. A Thai national married to a foreigner can register a condominium unit in the Thai spouse’s sole name. For the unit to stay in the Thai quota, both spouses confirm that all money used is the Thai spouse’s personal property (sin suan tua), not marital property (sin somros).

Read that again. You are signing a document that says the money was never yours in a marital sense. The Land Office relies on it. So will a divorce court, at least as a starting point.

Divorce: what the declaration does to you

Section 1474 of the Civil and Commercial Code normally presumes that property acquired during marriage is marital property. Here, however, the joint declaration records that the purchase money is the Thai spouse’s personal property, and the Land Department regulation treats the resulting unit as personal property under Section 1472. If the marriage ends, the foreign spouse has no registered share in the unit. Any separate contractual claim would depend on its own facts and cannot be treated as ownership of the condominium.

Death: the inheritance quota trap

This is the risk buyers never see coming. If your Thai spouse dies and you inherit the unit, as a foreign heir who does not qualify must notify the Land Office and dispose of the unit within one year under. A foreign heir who does qualify may still have to dispose of the inherited unit if retaining it would exceed the foreign quota. If the required sale is not completed, the Director-General of the Land Department has power to dispose of the unit.

A Last will and Testament in Thailand helps with succession but does not create quota. Our guide on inheriting property in Thailand as a foreign heir sets out the timeline.

Ways to reduce the exposure

Your spouse can grant you a registered usufruct or a registered 30-year lease. A usufruct is a real right to possess, use and enjoy the unit; a lease gives contractual possession for its registered term. Section 1417 of the Code governs usufruct. Neither makes you the owner or overrides the quota rule on inheritance, but either can protect continued occupation after separation or the owner’s death, subject to its terms. Couples should also read our page on the legal consequences of marriage in Thailand before signing.

Risk assessment: Medium to high. Fully legal, but you hold no title, the divorce outcome is against you by design, and the inheritance rule can force a sale. Suitable only for a stable marriage where the foreign spouse accepts these consequences with open eyes.

Option 5: Buy Through a Thai-Majority Company High risk

The last option is the one that gets foreigners prosecuted. We list it because it’s legal in one narrow form and because you’ll be offered it. We rank it last because most versions sold to foreign buyers are not legal at all.

The narrow legal version

A Thai limited company can buy in the Thai quota only if it is not regarded as foreign under Sections 97 and 98 of the Land Code. The test is not simply a “51% Thai shares” label; the capital structure and, where applicable, the number and status of shareholders also matter. The lawful version has genuine Thai shareholders who paid for their shares, exercise their rights and hold them for their own benefit. The company must also have a lawful corporate purpose for acquiring the unit.

The nominee version and why it’s a crime

The version usually offered to a foreign buyer is different. Thai “shareholders” hold the majority on paper, paid nothing and act only on the foreigner’s instructions. Those facts point to a nominee arrangement. Preference shares, shareholder loans and share-transfer documents are not unlawful by themselves. The offence arises when Thai shareholders hold shares on another person’s behalf to evade the law.

Section 67 of the Condominium Act punishes anyone who holds a unit on behalf of a foreigner or foreign juristic person, whether or not that foreign person would otherwise qualify to own a unit. The penalty is up to two years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to 20,000 baht, or both.

Section 36 of the Foreign Business Act B.E. 2542 also applies when a Thai nominee helps a foreigner evade restrictions on a business governed by that Act. Section 36 punishes both the Thai participant and the foreigner who consents, with imprisonment of up to three years, a fine of 100,000 to 1,000,000 baht, or both. A daily fine of 10,000 to 50,000 baht applies for failure to comply with the resulting court order.

Enforcement in 2025 and 2026

This is no longer a theoretical risk. The Department of Business Development has long screened companies with foreign participation for nominee indicators, and enforcement intensified in 2025 and 2026. Thai shareholders may be asked where their share capital came from, and bank statements may be checked. The Department of Special Investigation and the Anti-Money Laundering Office have joined operations in Phuket, Koh Samui, Koh Pha-ngan and Hua Hin. Company records are cross-checked against land and condominium registrations. Our tracker of nominee crackdowns in Thailand and the court cases behind them is updated as cases are reported. Our page on Thai nominee shareholders explains the verification now applied at registration.

Registrars and investigators look beyond the shareholder list to the source of funds and the parties’ conduct. A company whose Thai shareholders never paid for their shares and merely follow a foreigner’s instructions faces serious nominee risk. Preference voting rights or a foreign director do not, by themselves, prove a nominee arrangement; the full economic relationship matters.

The cost even if nobody investigates

A company must file audited accounts every year and hold shareholder meetings. If it lets a shareholder or director live there for free, the Revenue Department can assess income on an arm’s-length basis; the resulting corporate tax depends on the company’s full accounts. A company buying in the Thai quota does not rely on Section 19(5) FET evidence. When you sell, the buyer must either buy the shares, inheriting the company’s compliance history, or buy the unit from the company. An asset sale produces corporate tax consequences and withholding. Every step costs money and creates records that a later investigator can read.

Risk assessment: High. Lawful only for a genuine Thai company whose Thai shareholders invest and act for their own benefit. For a foreign individual who simply wants a home, the nominee version is a criminal structure that can end in forced sale, fines and imprisonment. We don’t set these up, and we advise clients to unwind them.

Comparison Table: Five Options When the Foreign Quota Is Full

What Is Not an Option (Even Though Someone Will Suggest It)

“Just co-own it with a Thai friend”

Land Office practice treats a unit with any foreign co-owner as a foreign-owned unit. The whole floor area counts against the 49% cap, not your half. Co-ownership doesn’t create quota. It also gives a friend a registered interest in your home.

“The quota will be 75% soon”

In 2024 the cabinet asked the Ministry of Interior to study raising the cap to 75% and extending leases to 99 years. The idea met strong political resistance. As of August 2026 no amending Act has been passed. Section 19 bis still says 49%. Never buy on the assumption that the law will change in your favour. If it does, you can benefit later.

“The developer guarantees foreign quota at transfer”

A developer can’t guarantee what the Land Office will register. It can only promise to refund you if registration fails. Make sure the contract says exactly that, with a date and an amount. Our off-plan condo guide explains how to draft the refund clause.

“Get an Elite or LTR visa, then the rules are different”

No visa changes the quota. Section 19 lists who may own, and most foreign buyers qualify through the foreign-currency route in Section 19(5), not because of their visa. Section 19 bis caps how much all qualifying foreigners may own together. An Elite or LTR visa does nothing about a full building.

Step-by-Step: What to Do This Week

1. Get the quota letter. Ask the condominium juristic person for its foreign ownership certificate. Keep the sales office out of it.
2. Freeze payments. Don’t pay the contract deposit or any instalment until the quota position is resolved in writing.
3. Re-read your reservation form. Look for any statement about foreign eligibility, the sale contract deadline, and refund terms. Photograph it.
4. Send a written notice. State that the unit can’t be registered to you and cite Section 378 of the Code. Ask for the fee back, or for a transfer to a unit in foreign quota. Give a deadline.
5. Decide with numbers. If you consider a lease, ask for the price as a lease and compare it to the freehold price. If you consider your spouse’s name, price in the divorce and inheritance risks honestly.
6. Have the replacement contract reviewed before signing. A lease, a conditional purchase agreement or a spousal purchase each need different clauses. Our flat-fee property packages start at THB 19,900 for a condominium purchase and include the contract review.

Costs and Fees to Expect

Figures are indicative as of August 2026. Government fees change by ministerial regulation, and reduced transfer fees are sometimes offered for lower-value units.

Frequently Asked Questions About a Full Foreign Quota

How ThaiLawOnline Can Help

We’ve been advising foreign clients in Thailand since 2006, in English, French and Thai. When the quota is full, we do three things fast. We confirm the real quota position with the juristic person. We seek recovery of your reservation fee or move it to a unit you can own. And we review any replacement lease or conditional contract before you sign.

Start with a one-hour consultation for THB 2,000, or choose a flat-fee condominium package from THB 19,900. You can also contact a Thai lawyer directly, or browse our Thai property law services.

Key Takeaways

• A full foreign quota means the Land Office will not register the unit to you. The 49% cap in Section 19 bis of the Condominium Act is applied at every transfer, with no discretion.
• Your lowest-risk moves are to recover the reservation fee or to move to a unit that still has quota. Section 378 of the Civil and Commercial Code and the OCPB reservation rules for developer sales back the refund.
• A registered 30-year lease is legal but is a different product. Value it at 30 years. Decision No. 4655/2566 voided two prepaid 30-year extensions designed to evade the statutory limit; renewal wording does not create a registered 90-year right.
• Buying in a Thai spouse’s name puts the unit outside your reach on divorce. After the Thai spouse’s death, Sections 19 quinque and 19 septem may require the foreign heir to sell within one year, depending on the heir’s qualification and the available quota.
• A Thai company can hold the unit in the Thai quota only when it is not regarded as foreign under the Land Code and its Thai shareholders invest and act for their own benefit. Holding the unit for a foreigner is an offence under Section 67 of the Condominium Act. Section 36 of the Foreign Business Act also applies where the arrangement evades restrictions under that Act.
• Joint ownership with a Thai, “30+30+30” leases, developer quota guarantees and the 75% proposal do not solve the problem.

This article is general information about Thai law as of August 2026. It is not legal advice for your transaction. Statutory references are to the Condominium Act B.E. 2522 as amended, the Civil and Commercial Code, and the Foreign Business Act B.E. 2542. Court decisions are cited by Supreme Court (Dika) number and Buddhist Era year. Fees and enforcement practice change. Speak to a licensed Thai lawyer before you sign or pay.

Thai Customs seized 49 gold ornaments from a company accused of dealing in smuggled goods. No prosecution was ever brought — the case became time-barred and the public prosecutor dropped it. So the owner sued to get the gold back, and the fight that followed, decided this month in Dika 208/2569, is a lesson for every traveller, importer and business in Thailand: recovering seized goods is a procedural minefield, and choosing the wrong court can cost you years. Here is how customs seizure works in Thailand and what to do if it happens to you.

What Happened in Dika 208/2569

Customs officials seized 49 items of gold jewellery from a company’s premises on suspicion of customs offences — dealing in goods smuggled without payment of duty, the offence under Section 27 bis of the (former) Customs Act B.E. 2469, the law in force at the time (today the equivalent provisions live in the Customs Act B.E. 2560 (2017), notably Sections 242 and 246).

No criminal case was filed within the limitation period. The Special Public Prosecutor formally dropped the matter as time-barred. The company then sued the Customs Department in the civil courts, relying on the owner’s right to follow and recover property under Section 1336 of the Civil and Commercial Code: return my gold, or pay me its value.

But the company had already fought essentially the same claim through the Administrative Court of First Instance and the Supreme Administrative Court, which had dismissed it. When the jurisdiction question reached the committee that decides conflicts between the court systems, the ruling was firm: the dispute belongs to the administrative court system, under Section 9(1) and (3) of the Act on Establishment of Administrative Courts and Administrative Court Procedure B.E. 2542 (1999). A claimant cannot re-run an identical claim about the same official action in a second court system after losing in the first — the case stays in one consistent judicial track.

Why This Matters: Seizure Is an Official Act

The instinct of most owners is simple: “It is my property, so I file a civil claim to get it back.” Dika 208/2569 shows why that instinct can be wrong. A seizure by customs officers is the exercise of state power. Challenging how that power was used — including refusing to return goods after a prosecution collapses — is generally a dispute with an administrative agency, not an ordinary quarrel between private parties. And once you have chosen a forum and lost, you do not get a second run at the same claim in the other system.

The practical consequences are strict deadlines (administrative annulment cases generally must be filed within 90 days of knowing of the act), different remedies, and different evidence. Which track applies depends on precisely what you attack: the legality of the seizure, the refusal to return the goods, a forfeiture order made by a criminal court, or a settlement demand. This is where cases are won and lost before they begin — our overview of the Thai court system explains how the Courts of Justice and the Administrative Courts divide the work.

How Customs Seizure Works in Thailand

At the airport

Travellers arriving in Thailand choose between the Green Channel (nothing to declare) and the Red Channel (goods to declare). Walking through the Green Channel with dutiable or restricted goods — jewellery and gold above personal-use quantities, more than 200 cigarettes, more than 1 litre of alcohol, commercial merchandise — is itself an offence, and the goods can be seized on the spot. Since May 2025 every foreign traveller also files the Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC) before arrival; it is not a customs declaration, and it does not replace the Red Channel.

The offences and the stakes

Under the Customs Act B.E. 2560, smuggling (Section 242) and dealing in or possessing smuggled goods (Section 246) carry imprisonment of up to 10 and 5 years respectively, fines calculated as a multiple of the duty-inclusive value of the goods, and — critically — forfeiture of the goods themselves. Vehicles and containers used can also be forfeited.

Settlement: the usual exit

Most airport and small commercial cases never reach court. The Customs Act allows case settlement: the owner pays a negotiated fine (and duty), and the criminal case ends. Settlement is fast, but it is a choice with consequences — paying may be treated as admitting the offence, and the goods are often still forfeited depending on the terms. Never sign a settlement you do not understand; have it reviewed first, the same way you would treat any charge sheet in a Thai criminal case.

Your Options After a Seizure

Practical Advice for Expats and Businesses

Declare when in doubt: duty at the Red Channel is almost always cheaper than a seizure file. Carry evidence for valuables you bring temporarily — receipts, photos, and where relevant an export declaration from your home country — so you can show the gold necklace entered Thailand lawfully or was owned before travel. For businesses, keep import entries and duty receipts matched to inventory; in a Section 246 case, the burden of explaining smuggled stock quickly lands on the possessor. And if officers seize goods, get a seizure receipt listing every item, sign nothing that admits an offence without advice, and diarise the deadlines immediately — as Dika 208/2569 shows, the procedural clock, not the merits, often decides who keeps the gold. If you are planning a move with household effects and valuables, our complete legal guide to moving to Thailand covers the import rules that apply to newcomers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get seized goods back if I am never prosecuted?

Sometimes, but not automatically. Dika 208/2569 shows that even where prosecution became time-barred, the owner spent years litigating — in the wrong forum. The claim for return must be made promptly, against the right agency, in the right court system.

Which court hears a claim against Thai Customs?

Challenges to seizures and refusals to return goods are generally administrative disputes for the Administrative Court. Forfeiture ordered within a criminal case is contested in the criminal courts. A pure ownership fight between private parties goes to the civil courts. Choosing wrongly can be fatal to the claim.

How much gold can I bring into Thailand?

Personal jewellery in reasonable quantities for personal use is not dutiable, but gold in commercial quantities, gold bars and bullion must be declared. There is no fixed gram allowance in the law — quantity, packaging and circumstances decide, and officers have wide discretion at the border. Declare at the Red Channel when in doubt.

Is paying a customs settlement an admission of guilt?

Settlement ends the criminal case, and paying is generally treated as accepting the charge for that purpose. Whether the goods are returned or forfeited depends on the settlement terms — read them before paying, not after.

What deadline applies to suing over a seizure?

For administrative challenges to an official act or refusal, the general rule is 90 days from the date you knew or should have known of it. Civil property claims have longer prescription periods, but as Dika 208/2569 shows, you may not be allowed to use the civil track at all. Take advice immediately after any seizure.

This article was written and reviewed by Sebastien H. Brousseau, LL.B., B.Sc., practicing law in Thailand since 2004. If Customs has seized your goods, offered you a settlement, or you face a smuggling allegation, contact ThaiLawOnline — early advice protects both the goods and you.

Disclaimer: this article is general legal information based on published court decisions, not legal advice for your specific situation.

Two Supreme Court jurisdiction rulings published this month — Dika 212/2569 and Dika 213/2569 — answer a question that terrifies property buyers in Thailand: what happens when a government agency says the land under your home, or under your condominium project, belongs to the State? The answer decides which court you must sue in, what you must prove, and how long you will fight. This guide explains both decisions in plain English and what they mean for foreigners who own, lease or plan to buy property in Thailand.

Why State Land Claims Matter to Foreign Buyers

Thailand has large areas of State land: forest reserves, public domain land used by all citizens (such as grazing land, canals and roads), and property registered to government departments. Under Section 1304 of the Civil and Commercial Code, public domain property of the State cannot be privately owned, and under Section 1305 it cannot be transferred except by specific legislation. No matter how beautiful the title document looks, land that is legally State land can never become private land through occupation or purchase.

The problem is that the boundaries of State land were often surveyed decades ago, badly, or never at all. Families who occupied land since before the Land Code B.E. 2497 (1954) hold claims that collide with later State registrations. When the Treasury Department or a local authority registers a plot as State property — the certificate is called Nor Sor Lor (น.ส.ล.) — everyone inside the boundary suddenly finds their land documents frozen: no upgrade to a Chanote, no registered sale, no mortgage.

Buyers of houses, villas and even condominium units on islands and in resort areas inherit these risks. That is exactly what the two new Supreme Court rulings deal with.

Dika 212/2569: A Condominium, Six Owners and a State Property Certificate

In the first case, a condominium juristic person and six unit owners sued a subdistrict municipality, the subdistrict headman and the land official. The authorities had objected to land title applications and relied on a State property certificate (น.ส.ล.) covering land the plaintiffs said was theirs. The plaintiffs asked the court to order the objections withdrawn and the certificate revoked, while the authorities argued the land was public property used by all citizens.

The question was not yet who owns the land — it was which court decides. The dispute went to the committee that resolves conflicts of jurisdiction between the Courts of Justice and the Administrative Courts under the Act on Determination of the Competence of Courts B.E. 2542 (1999).

The ruling: this is a dispute over rights in land between the parties. Even though the defendants are government bodies, the heart of the case is “whose land is it?” — a classic civil question. It therefore belongs in the ordinary courts (Courts of Justice), not the Administrative Court, applying Section 9(1) of the Act on Establishment of Administrative Courts and Administrative Court Procedure B.E. 2542.

Dika 213/2569: Occupation Since 1935 Against a Treasury Registration

The second case is the mirror image. A private citizen had occupied and farmed about 12 rai since 1935 — long before the Land Code came into force. The Ministry of Finance later registered the wider area as State property, overlapping her holding and blocking any land document from being issued. She asked the court to revoke the State property registration itself and prohibit the agencies from interfering.

Here the committee ruled the opposite way: because the claim attacks the lawfulness of an administrative act — the registration of the area as State property — it is an administrative dispute under Section 9(1) of the Administrative Courts Act B.E. 2542, and belongs in the Administrative Court. The Land Code B.E. 2497 and the State Property Act B.E. 2562 (2019) frame what the agencies may register and how.

The Dividing Line: Which Court Hears Your Land Dispute With the State?

Read together, the two rulings draw a practical line that every owner should understand:

Filing in the wrong court can cost a year or more before the jurisdiction question is even settled — these two cases each went through the full committee procedure before anyone argued about the land itself. Framing the case correctly at the start is not a technicality; it is the difference between deciding the dispute and litigating about where to litigate.

What This Means Before You Buy

1. A title deed is the beginning of due diligence, not the end

A Chanote issued over State land is voidable no matter how many times it has changed hands. Serious property due diligence in Thailand checks the history of the parcel back to its first issuance, the surrounding State land registrations, and any forest reserve or public domain overlays — especially on islands and near beaches, where Dika 213/2569-type conflicts are common.

2. Know your document

The strength of your position differs radically between a Chanote, a Nor Sor 3 Gor and possession-only papers. See our guide to Thai title deeds, and if you are looking at land held only under Por Bor Tor 5 (ภ.บ.ท.5) — a tax receipt, not a title — understand that in a contest with a State registration the occupier usually loses.

3. Condominium buyers are not immune

Dika 212/2569 involved condominium unit owners. If the land under the project is contested, the juristic person and the owners are dragged into litigation collectively. Foreigners buying under the condominium quota should confirm the project’s land history, and house buyers should read how foreigners can legally own a house in Thailand while leasing or holding rights over the land.

4. Fraud and State claims often travel together

Deeds issued over State land are a classic product of title fraud, as the Supreme Court showed earlier this year in Dika 914/2569 on title deed fraud. If your deed’s history includes an unexplained first issuance in a protected area, treat it as a red flag.

If You Are Already in a Dispute

Act quickly and in the right order. Gather every document showing the chain of possession (ส.ค.1 filings, tax receipts, aerial photos, utility records). Identify precisely which official act harms you — an objection, a survey, a registration, a revocation — because that determines the forum and, in the Administrative Court, a strict filing deadline (generally 90 days from knowledge of the act for annulment cases). Then choose the forum deliberately: sue on ownership in the ordinary courts, or attack the administrative act in the Administrative Court. Our overview of the Thai court system explains how the two systems work side by side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the Thai government really take land that has a Chanote?

The State does not “take” it — it argues the Chanote should never have existed because the land was State land when the deed was first issued. If that is proved, the deed is revoked. Compensation is generally not payable to a buyer in good faith, which is why due diligence on the parcel’s history matters so much.

What is a Nor Sor Lor (น.ส.ล.)?

It is a certificate registering land as State property — for a government agency or as public domain land. It is not a private title deed. When a น.ส.ล. overlaps private claims, disputes like Dika 212/2569 and 213/2569 follow.

Which court do I sue in if officials block my title application?

It depends on the substance. If the real fight is over who has the better right in the land, the ordinary courts decide (Dika 212/2569). If you are challenging the lawfulness of the official act itself, the Administrative Court decides (Dika 213/2569). Many cases could be framed either way — take advice first.

Does long occupation defeat the State?

No. There is no adverse possession against State public domain land (Civil and Commercial Code, Sections 1304–1306). Pre-1954 occupation can support a claim that the land never became State land, which is what the plaintiff in Dika 213/2569 argues — but it must be proved, and the forum for that fight matters.

Can a foreigner be a party to these disputes?

Yes. Foreigners who own condominium units, hold registered leases, usufructs or superficies, or whose Thai spouse or company holds the land, are directly affected and can litigate in both court systems through counsel.

This article was written and reviewed by Sebastien H. Brousseau, LL.B., B.Sc., practicing law in Thailand since 2004. If a government agency has objected to your title, registered State property over your land, or you want a parcel’s history checked before you buy, contact ThaiLawOnline for a consultation in English or French.

Disclaimer: this article is general legal information based on published court decisions, not legal advice for your specific situation.

What the Labour Protection Act actually requires, what the cabinet calendar does not, and how to pay staff correctly when they work the day.

A client called us last November in a mild panic. Their Bangkok office had copied the Bank of Thailand calendar straight into the staff handbook, closed on all of it, and felt generous.

A labour inspector disagreed. The handbook was missing Khao Phansa, which is fine. It also failed to announce the year’s list in advance, which isn’t.

That is the trap with Thailand public holidays. There are three overlapping calendars in this country, and only one of them creates a legal duty for you. Copy the wrong list and you can be closed on days you did not owe while short-changing staff on days you did.

This guide sets out the rules for private employers. You’ll get the 2027 calendar, the remaining 2026 dates, the pay multipliers with worked examples, and the penalties for getting it wrong.

How many public holidays must you give in Thailand?

Thirteen. That’s the floor, and it comes from Section 29 of the Labour Protection Act B.E. 2541 (1998).

The section is short and it does three things. It fixes the minimum at not less than thirteen traditional holidays per year. It requires that National Labour Day be one of them.

And it obliges you to announce the list to your employees in advance.

The 13-day minimum and National Labour Day

Most foreign employers get the number right and the announcement wrong. Announcing “in advance” means before the year starts, in writing, where staff can see it. A calendar circulated in March for a year already underway does not cure a January breach.

National Labour Day on 1 May is compulsory. You cannot swap it out for Christmas or for a day that suits your production schedule better. Everything else in your thirteen is your choice, provided the days are genuine traditional or annual official holidays.

In our experience

Foreign-managed companies routinely assume the government’s list is the legal standard. It isn’t. The cabinet list governs government offices.

Your duty is your own announced list. Publish fourteen or eighteen days and that becomes your contractual standard.

Going above thirteen is fine. Quietly dropping back down next year is not, because it worsens an existing employment condition.

Government list, bank list, your list

Here is where the confusion starts. The three lists genuinely differ, and the differences are not trivial.

The cabinet’s standing list has held 19 recurring days since the 2019 revision that added Coronation Day and Queen Suthida’s birthday. So government offices get more days than the statutory minimum. That is a policy choice, not a legal obligation you inherit.

Why does the Bank of Thailand list matter, then? For a different reason. It tells you when banks close, which drives your payroll cut-off dates and your supplier payment runs.

Treat it as an operations input, not a legal one.

Thailand public holidays 2027: the full calendar

The table below is the working 2027 calendar. Bank of Thailand hadn’t published its formal B.E. 2570 announcement when we compiled this in August 2026.

The cabinet had approved no special bridge days for 2027 either. We flag the unsettled dates.

Date to watch

Asarnha Bucha 2027 is contested. The Thai lunar calendar and the astronomical full moon both point to Sunday 18 July, with Khao Phansa on Monday 19 July. A few English-language calendars publish 19 and 20 July instead.

Don’t lock your July 2027 shift roster until the official announcements appear. We expect them in the second half of 2026.

Remaining 2026 public holidays

Six dates are left in 2026 as of late August. Two of them create three-day weekends, and one applies only in Bangkok.

Note what is not on that list. Two extra bridge days for June and July 2026 were proposed. The cabinet withdrew them in December 2025 over concerns about the impact on employers.

A viral post in May 2026 claimed they’d been approved. The government spokesperson denied it and the Anti-Fake News Centre logged the claim. Several HR teams had already published revised calendars by then.

The moveable Buddhist holidays

Four of Thailand’s holidays move each year with the lunar calendar. They are Makha Bucha, Visakha Bucha, Asarnha Bucha and Khao Phansa. Each is tied to a full moon in a specific Thai lunar month, and Khao Phansa always falls the day after Asarnha Bucha.

Think of them the way a British employer thinks of Easter. The date shifts, the entitlement doesn’t, and your rota software won’t work it out on its own.

The Royal Ploughing Ceremony is different again. An auspicious date is chosen each year by the Bureau of the Royal Household, usually in May. It’s a government holiday only.

Substitution days and how they actually work

Section 29 paragraph two handles the collision case. When a traditional holiday falls on an employee’s weekly holiday, the employee takes the substitute on the next working day.

A couple of details trip people up.

First, the rule keys off the employee’s weekly holiday, not off Saturday and Sunday. If your security team’s weekly holiday is Wednesday, a holiday landing on their Wednesday triggers a substitution. A holiday landing on their Sunday, which is a normal working day for them, does not.

Second, the substitute is a full paid holiday. It carries the same Section 62 and Section 63 pay consequences if someone works it.

Employers sometimes treat the in-lieu day as a discretionary favour. It isn’t.

Cabinet special holidays are not binding on you

Every year or two the Thai cabinet announces an extra day to bridge a holiday to a weekend. The aim is usually to stimulate domestic tourism.

These bind government offices, and the Bank of Thailand usually follows for banks. Private employers are free to ignore them.

Most companies close anyway, because half their counterparties and all the banks are shut. That’s a commercial decision with a payroll consequence.

Close on a day that isn’t on your announced list and you still owe full wages for it. You cannot deduct it, and you cannot force staff to take annual leave for it without agreement.

Practical drafting point

Add a clause to your work rules saying the company may observe additional government-announced holidays at its discretion. State that doing so in one year creates no entitlement in later years. We put this in every set of work rules we draft. It costs nothing and it kills the “but we got it last year” argument.

Holiday pay in Thailand: what you owe and when

This is where the money is, and where most disputes start. Three sections do the work.

Pay for the holiday itself (Section 56)

Section 56 requires you to pay wages equal to a working day for weekly holidays, traditional holidays and annual leave. For monthly-salaried staff this is invisible, because the salary already covers the month.

Daily-paid and hourly-paid staff are the exception on weekly holidays only. Section 56 expressly carves them out of paid weekly holidays.

But they’re fully entitled to paid traditional holidays and paid annual leave. Read that twice. It’s the single most common payroll error we see in factories and construction firms.

Working on a holiday (Section 62)

Section 62 splits by whether the employee is entitled to holiday pay for that day.

• Entitled to holiday pay (the monthly-salaried case): you add not less than one times the hourly working-day rate for the hours worked. The salary covers the first 100%, so the total is 200%.
• Not entitled to holiday pay (the daily-paid weekly-holiday case): you pay not less than two times the hourly working-day rate.

Overtime on a holiday (Section 63)

Hours beyond normal working hours on a holiday attract not less than three times the hourly working-day rate. There is no cap on the multiplier stacking with anything else. Three times is three times.

Two worked examples

Numbers make this concrete. Assume an eight-hour normal working day in both cases.

The monthly divisor of 30 is the convention Thai labour officials apply, and it is what the Labour Court will expect to see. Using 22 or 26 working days instead inflates the hourly rate and quietly overpays. Using 31 underpays, which is the version that gets you an inspection.

Under Section 70 you must pay holiday pay and holiday overtime pay by the agreed payday. On termination the clock is much tighter: everything owed must be settled within three days.

When can you require staff to work on a holiday?

Section 25 is the gate. The default is that you cannot order it.

You may require holiday work without consent in two situations. The first is work whose nature requires continuous performance, where stopping would damage the work. The second is genuine emergency work.

Beyond that, Section 25 lists sectors where holiday work may be required. Hotels, entertainment venues, transport, food and beverage outlets, clubs, associations and medical establishments are all named. Ministerial regulation can add more. If you’re running a resort in Phuket or a logistics operation, you are probably inside this exception.

Everyone else needs the employee’s prior consent, on each occasion. A blanket contract clause saying the employee agrees to work holidays whenever asked doesn’t satisfy this.

The consent must be specific and it must come first. Get it in writing, even a dated email or a signed roster acknowledgement.

The Section 64 trap

Section 64 is the provision employers never see coming. Fail to give the holidays required by Sections 28, 29 or 30 and the law steps in. It treats you as if you’d ordered the employee to work them.

You then owe holiday pay and holiday overtime pay at the Section 62 and 63 rates for every one of those days. Across a workforce of 60 people over three years, that arithmetic gets ugly fast.

Who is exempt: managers and special categories

Not every employee is entitled to the premium rates. Section 65 lists the exceptions, and Section 66 adds a sting for one of them.

Section 65 covers employees with authority to act for the employer on hiring, paying remuneration, cutting wages or dismissal. It also covers a short list of operational roles.

Railway operations, water gates, water level readings, firefighting and public disaster prevention are all in there. So is work outside the premises where hours can’t be fixed, plus watching over property outside normal duties.

All of them lose the right to overtime pay under Section 61 and holiday overtime pay under Section 63. Categories two through eight still receive money equal to the hourly working-day rate for hours actually worked.

Category one, the managerial group, is treated differently. Section 66 says an employee under Section 65(1) is not entitled to holiday pay under Section 62 either, unless the employer agrees to pay it. So a genuine manager who works Songkran gets nothing extra by default.

Careful

The Section 65(1) test is about actual authority, not job title. Calling someone “Assistant Manager” while they have no power to hire, discipline or dismiss won’t defeat an overtime claim.

Thai labour courts look at what the person actually does. We’ve seen employers lose six-figure back-pay claims on exactly this point. If you rely on this exemption, make the delegation of authority documented and real.

Penalties for getting holidays wrong

The Act splits penalties by how serious the breach is, and the split is not intuitive. Failing to give the holidays is the cheaper offence. Failing to pay for them is the expensive one.

Fines are not the real risk. Section 9 is. Unpaid wages, overtime pay, holiday pay and holiday overtime pay carry interest at 15% per annum from the due date.

Withhold payment deliberately and without reasonable cause and it gets worse. An additional surcharge of 15% runs for every seven-day period the money stays unpaid.

Read that surcharge again. It is per seven days, not per year. A deliberate withholding that runs for a few months compounds into something no finance director wants to explain.

Claims typically start with a complaint to a labour inspector at the Department of Labour Protection and Welfare. The inspector can issue an order to pay.

From there it goes to the Labour Court, where filing is free for employees and lawyers aren’t required. That asymmetry is deliberate. It means small claims get litigated here that would never be worth pursuing elsewhere.

Step-by-step: setting your holiday calendar

Here’s the process we walk clients through each Q4.

1. Pull the official lists in October or November. Take the cabinet resolution and the Bank of Thailand announcement for the coming year. Both usually publish in the second half of the preceding year.
2. Pick your days, minimum thirteen. Start with 1 May because it is compulsory. Add Songkran and New Year because staff expect them. Fill the rest from the cabinet list.
3. Check what you did last year. If you gave sixteen days for three years running, dropping to thirteen is a reduction in employment conditions and needs consent. Match or exceed the established practice.
4. Map the substitutions. Work out which holidays land on each employee group’s weekly holiday. Shift teams and office teams often produce different answers.
5. Write it into your work rules. Section 108 requires employers with ten or more employees to have work rules in Thai. Holidays and the rules for taking them are a mandatory item, as are the rules governing overtime and holiday work.
6. Announce and post it before the year begins. Physical notice board and intranet. Keep a dated copy. This is your evidence if an inspector asks.
7. Brief payroll on the multipliers. Especially the monthly versus daily-paid distinction under Section 62. Test it against a real December payslip before January.
8. Keep the records. Section 114 requires wage payment documents showing working days, hours and the amounts of overtime pay and holiday pay. Section 115 requires two years of retention.

If your headcount crosses ten mid-year, the work rules must be in place within fifteen days. That deadline catches a lot of growing startups.

Our Thailand employment law guide for employers covers the wider compliance picture. We also keep an employment agreement template for Thailand with the right holiday clauses already in it.

Frequently asked questions

How ThaiLawOnline can help

We’ve been advising employers in Thailand for more than 30 years. Holiday compliance is one of the cheapest problems to fix before it turns expensive. If your current handbook was translated from a head-office template, it almost certainly does not satisfy Section 108.

We draft and register work rules, audit payroll multipliers against the Act, and defend employers at labour inspection and in the Labour Court. We also handle work permits in Bangkok, social security registration and minimum wage compliance for the same clients.

Already in a dispute? Read what to know before you go to court in Thailand. Then consider whether alternative dispute resolution gets you a better outcome. Employees can review their side of the ledger in our guide to employee rights in Thailand.

Setting up in Thailand from scratch? Start with company registration and the wider business law framework, then build the employment layer on top. Contact us for a consultation.

Key takeaways

• Thirteen paid traditional holidays is the statutory floor under Section 29, and 1 May is compulsory.
• Announce your list in writing before the year starts. Failing to announce is itself a breach.
• The cabinet list and the Bank of Thailand list are not your legal duty. Your announced list is.
• Cabinet bridge holidays do not bind private employers. Close if you like, but pay full wages.
• Monthly staff working a holiday get one extra day. Daily staff get double. Overtime on a holiday is triple.
• Daily-paid staff are excluded from paid weekly holidays only. They still get paid traditional holidays.
• Section 64 turns a failure to give holidays into a deemed order to work them, with pay to match.
• Underpayment carries prison exposure under Section 144 plus 15% interest and a 15% per-seven-day surcharge.
• Ten or more employees means written work rules in Thai within fifteen days, holidays included.

A retiree walks into Jomtien Immigration with 800,000 baht in his account and walks out with a rejection. The money arrived six weeks ago, not eight. Another applicant brings a pension of 64,200 baht a month, 800 baht short of the threshold, because the baht strengthened between the day he calculated it and the day of his appointment. Neither man broke a rule he knew about. Both lost a year.

Thailand does not have a “retirement visa”. It has three separate routes, each with its own money test, and the differences between them decide how much of your capital sits frozen in a Thai bank for the next decade. This page explains the financial requirements for all three, names the instrument behind each number, and answers the question no competing page touches: whether the transfer you make to satisfy the rule is itself taxable.

ThaiLawOnline has handled Thai immigration and long-stay work for foreign clients since 2006.

The three routes at a glance

Most guides describe one route and call it “the retirement visa”. The reader’s actual question is which of the three to pick. Read the table on the two rows that decide most cases: how much money, and how long it stays locked.

The Non-O plus annual extension route is what most foreigners in Thailand actually hold, despite “O-A” being the phrase people search. You enter on another visa, convert to Non-Immigrant O inside Thailand, then apply each year for a one-year extension of stay on the ground of retirement. It carries no insurance requirement, and you never deal with an embassy abroad. The mechanics of that annual renewal, the TM7 form, the documents and the office procedure, are set out in our guide to the extension of stay based on retirement. This page is about choosing between the three routes in the first place.

The financial requirements, from the actual rules

The criteria for a retirement extension of stay sit in Royal Thai Police Order No. 327/2557 (2014), clause 2.22, issued under the extension power in section 35 of the Immigration Act B.E. 2522 (1979). Immigration officers apply that clause, not a website. It gives an applicant aged 50 or over three ways to prove money.

The deposit method: 800,000 baht, and how long it has to sit there

Deposit not less than 800,000 baht in a Thai bank account in your own name. The account must be Thai, not foreign, and sole, not joint. Beyond the headline number, three timing rules catch people out:

• Season the money before you file. Clause 2.22(4) requires the 800,000 to have been on deposit for the past three months at the filing date, and carves out the first year only, where 60 days is enough. So it is 60 days for your first extension and three months for every one after it. One caveat we would rather state than hide: reproductions of the 2019 amending order circulate widely saying two months for every application, and that order’s primary text is not publicly available for checking. Until it is, plan on three months, which satisfies both readings.
• Hold the full 800,000 for three months after approval. The balance stays at 800,000 for three months from the date immigration grants the extension.
• Never drop below 400,000 after that. Once the three months pass you may spend down, but the account must not fall below 400,000 baht at any point in the year. Two months before your next renewal, it has to be back at 800,000.

Immigration reads the account history, not just the closing balance. Parking money to clear the threshold and pulling it out afterwards is the most common reason a renewal fails, because the passbook shows exactly what happened.

The income method: 65,000 baht a month, and the embassy letter problem

Show monthly income of not less than 65,000 baht. This route once ran on a simple affidavit from your own embassy. It no longer does. The United States, United Kingdom and Australian missions in Thailand stopped issuing income verification letters in 2019 and have not resumed.

American, British and Australian retirees now prove income the hard way: twelve months of Thai bank statements showing at least 65,000 baht arriving from abroad every month, plus a credit advice from the bank confirming each transfer came from overseas. That means planning a year ahead. You cannot decide in October to use the income method in November.

The combination method

Add a smaller deposit to a smaller income until the twelve-month total reaches 800,000 baht. A retiree with 300,000 baht in the bank and 45,000 a month in pension reaches 840,000 and qualifies. Offices vary in how they compute the income leg, so bring the arithmetic written out and the statements to support it.

The exchange-rate trap on the income method

Your pension arrives in dollars, pounds or euros. Immigration counts baht, at the rate on the day. A pension worth 68,000 baht when you planned the application can land at 64,200 when the baht strengthens, and 64,200 fails. The threshold has no tolerance.

Build a margin of at least ten percent into the income method, or use the deposit method, where the number cannot move under you. This is the single cheapest piece of advice on this page.

Health insurance: who needs it and who does not

Insurance is the requirement most often stated wrongly, because it attaches to the visa type rather than to retirement itself.

• Non-O plus annual extension: no insurance requirement. This is the main practical advantage of the in-country route.
• O-A: coverage of 3,000,000 baht or USD 100,000, including COVID-19 treatment. The 2019 rules set a much lower bar of 40,000 baht outpatient and 400,000 baht inpatient. It rose on two separate tracks, which is why the rule is so often stated wrongly as one tightening. Consular posts issuing the visa abroad moved to the higher figure on 1 October 2021. Extension of stay inside Thailand moved a year later, on 1 October 2022, under Order of the Royal Thai Police No. 654/2564, which is also what lets an O-A holder extending here use a non-Thai insurer at not less than USD 100,000. A foreign policy is accepted only with the signed Foreign Insurance Certificate from longstay.tgia.org, and immigration checks the insurer against the OIC list.
• O-X: 40,000 baht outpatient and 400,000 baht inpatient, from a Thai insurer, maintained for the whole stay.

The O-X visa, explained properly

The O-X gives ten years, and almost every English-language page describes it inaccurately. Here are the official figures, from Royal Thai Embassy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs consular pages.

You must be 50 or over and hold one of 14 nationalities: Japan, Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Every other nationality is out.

The money test asks for a deposit of not less than 3,000,000 baht in a Thai bank, or a deposit of 1,800,000 baht plus annual income of not less than 1,200,000 baht. Then comes the part nobody explains:

The full amount stays in the account, untouched, for at least one year. After that year the balance may never fall below 1,500,000 baht.

Compare that with the extension route, where the floor drops to 400,000 baht after three months. On the O-X you surrender access to 1.5 million baht permanently, for as long as you hold the visa. For many retirees that is the deciding fact, and it is the reason a ten-year visa is not automatically the better deal.

The visa runs five years and renews once, for ten in total. You still report your address every 90 days.

Is your 800,000 baht transfer taxable?

This is the question the retirement-visa pages skip, and in 2026 it matters more than any of them.

Spend 180 days or more in Thailand in a calendar year and you become a Thai tax resident. Section 41 paragraph 2 of the Revenue Code taxes a resident on foreign-source income brought into Thailand. Departmental Instructions Por. 161/2566 and Por. 162/2566, effective 1 January 2024, removed the timing escape that used to let people wait a year and remit tax-free. Income you earn in a year when you are tax resident is assessable whenever it lands in Thailand, this year or in ten years.

Por. 162/2566 preserves one protection that matters enormously here: income earned before 1 January 2024 stays outside the rule. Money from pre-2024 savings can be remitted without Thai tax on the remittance.

So the practical position for a retiree seasoning an account:

• Transferring pre-2024 savings to make up the 800,000 baht carries no remittance tax, provided you can evidence the money as pre-2024. Keep statements showing the balance as at 31 December 2023.
• Transferring post-2023 income, including a pension paid into your home account this year, is a remittance of assessable income if you are tax resident in the year you earned it.
• A pension may still be relieved under the double tax treaty between Thailand and your country, and treaties differ sharply on government versus private pensions. Check yours before assuming either outcome.

Neither the remittance-timing exemption floated in 2025 nor the proposal to tax worldwide income regardless of remittance has become law. Por. 161/2566 and Por. 162/2566 remain the operative rules. Our guide to personal income tax in Thailand sets out the residence test and the filing mechanics.

Agents, borrowed bank balances and what the Penal Code says

Agents advertise extensions for people who do not have the money. The arrangement usually involves a balance that appears in your account before the appointment and leaves afterwards, sometimes with an accommodation at the immigration office attached.

You, not the agent, sign the application. Giving false information to an official engages Penal Code section 137. Causing a false entry in an official document engages section 267. Offering money or any benefit to an official to act contrary to duty is section 144, which carries up to five years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to 100,000 baht, or both. Add cancellation of your permission to stay, an overstay clock that starts the day it is cancelled, and a blacklist entry.

Immigration scrutiny of financial documentation has tightened through 2025 and 2026. An arrangement that worked quietly for years is a poor bet against a system now reading account histories line by line.

Keeping the extension alive

Getting the extension is the easy part. Three obligations run continuously, and each has its own penalty:

• 90-day reporting. Section 37(5) of the Immigration Act requires you to notify your address every 90 days. Report online, by post, or in person. See our guide to the 90-day report.
• TM30. Section 38 puts the notification duty on the house owner, landlord or hotel within 24 hours of your arrival at the address. Enforcement varies by province and bites when you next deal with immigration. See TM30 and how the rule developed.
• Re-entry permit. Leave Thailand without one and your extension dies at the border, whatever the stamp says. Buy the single or multiple permit before you fly. See our re-entry permit guide.

If you do not fit any of the three

Plenty of people cannot show 800,000 baht or 65,000 a month, or refuse to freeze capital in a Thai bank. Four alternatives:

• The LTR visa, ten years, aimed at wealthy pensioners, remote workers and skilled professionals, with its own income and asset tests.
• The DTV, five years, for remote workers and soft-power activities, with a much lower financial bar.
• The Privilege Visa, which converts money into years without a bank-balance test.
• The Thai spouse extension, which asks for 400,000 baht rather than 800,000 if you are married to a Thai national.

Our visa finder narrows the field in a few questions.

Frequently asked questions

Can I work on a retirement extension?

No. A retirement extension carries no right to work, and a work permit cannot be issued on it. Working, paid or unpaid, breaches the conditions of stay and exposes you to cancellation and prosecution. If you intend to work, the retirement route is the wrong one.

What happens if my balance drops below 400,000 baht?

You breach the retention condition. Immigration will not usually notice mid-year, but the passbook and the bank letter at your next renewal show the whole year. Expect refusal, and expect to rebuild the seasoning period from scratch before you can apply again.

Does the 800,000 baht have to stay in the bank all year?

No. It stays at 800,000 for three months after approval, then may fall to a floor of 400,000, and must return to 800,000 for the two months before your next application. That is the annual cycle.

Can my spouse rely on my retirement extension?

Your spouse can apply for a dependent extension based on your status rather than qualifying separately. See our spouse and dependent visas guide. Each dependent adds documentation, so start earlier than you think you need to.

Is the O-A still worth it now that it requires USD 100,000 of insurance?

For most retirees already in Thailand, no. Converting to Non-O inside the country and extending annually reaches the same one-year permission with no insurance requirement. The O-A earns its place when you want the visa issued before you move, or when you want multiple entries during the first year without a re-entry permit.

Do I become a Thai tax resident just by retiring here?

You become tax resident by presence, at 180 days in a calendar year, whatever visa you hold. Residence triggers the remittance rules described above. It does not automatically create a tax bill, because pre-2024 savings and treaty relief may cover you, but it does create a filing question you should answer deliberately rather than by accident.

Where this leaves you

Pick the route by the money you are willing to immobilise, not by the number of years printed on the visa. The O-X buys ten years and costs you permanent access to 1.5 million baht. The annual extension costs one afternoon a year and leaves 400,000 baht locked. The O-A sits between them and adds an insurance premium for life.

Then plan the transfer before you make it. The seasoning clock and the remittance rules both run on dates, and both are unforgiving of a decision made the week before an appointment.

If you want the route chosen and the paperwork prepared for you, contact ThaiLawOnline. We have handled Thai long-stay applications for foreign clients since 2006.

Updated 14 August 2026. You won your case abroad. The money, the company, or the land sits in Thailand. What happens next depends entirely on which piece of paper you are holding. A foreign court judgment cannot be enforced in Thailand and sends you back to the start of a fresh trial. A foreign arbitral award can be enforced, through a court petition, on a three-year clock. This guide covers both routes, what each costs, how long each takes, and the clause you should have written before any of this happened.

The short answer

Thai law draws a hard line between a judgment handed down by a foreign court and an award handed down by an arbitral tribunal. The line decides everything that follows.

Why Thailand does not enforce foreign court judgments

No Thai statute provides for the recognition or enforcement of foreign court judgments. Thailand has signed no bilateral judgment-enforcement treaty, and it is not a contracting party to the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention, which as of 2026 binds the European Union, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Uruguay, Albania, Andorra and Montenegro.

Nothing fills the gap. The consequence is blunt. Inside Thailand, your foreign judgment is not a judgment at all. It is a document.

What actually happens when you bring a foreign judgment to Thailand

You file a fresh action on the original claim

To reach a Thai debtor’s assets, the creditor starts a new civil case in a Thai court on the underlying cause of action: the unpaid invoice, the breached contract, the loan that was never repaid. You plead it under Thai law and you prove it again from the beginning. The foreign judgment goes into the file as evidence of what happened, not as an order the Thai court has to obey.

Three conditions before the judgment counts as evidence

Thai Supreme Court practice sets three conditions before a foreign judgment is admissible in Thai proceedings:

1. the judgment is final in the country that issued it, meaning no appeal is pending and none can still be brought;
2. it came from a court with subject-matter jurisdiction;
3. it does not contravene public order or the good morals of the Thai people.

Judgments on the merits, after proper notice and a real chance to defend, carry weight. Default judgments and rulings decided on procedural technicalities carry much less, because the Thai court can see that nobody tested the facts.

Evidence is not authority

Satisfy all three conditions and the Thai court still owes you nothing. It weighs the foreign judgment alongside the rest of the evidence, applies Thai law to the claim, and can reach a different result on the same facts. Foreign counsel routinely underestimates this. Winning in London does not mean winning in Bangkok. It means arriving in Bangkok with good evidence.

The prescription trap

This is the risk that costs people the entire claim, and no competing English-language page mentions it.

Because the Thai action runs on the underlying claim, the relevant Thai prescription period is the one attached to that claim. Under the Civil and Commercial Code the default is ten years from the date the claim arose (section 193/30), but many commercial and trade claims fall under much shorter periods. A creditor who spent four years litigating in New York may land in Thailand holding a fresh judgment on a claim that expired here while the foreign case was running.

Section 193/32 gives a ten-year prescription to a claim established by a final judgment, and creditors reach for it. Whether a Thai court will apply it to a foreign judgment, given that Thai law does not treat a foreign judgment as establishing anything, is not settled in the published sources. Do not build a recovery plan on it. Get Thai advice on the prescription position before the foreign case ends, not after.

Foreign arbitral awards: the route that works

Arbitration is a different world. Thailand acceded to the New York Convention on 21 December 1959, and it came into force here on 20 March 1960. The Arbitration Act B.E. 2545 (2002), amended by the Arbitration Act (No. 2) B.E. 2562 (2019), follows the UNCITRAL Model Law.

Section 41: the treaty gate

Section 41 makes an award binding on the parties whichever country produced it. Its second paragraph is the sentence that matters most to a foreign creditor: an award made abroad is enforceable by a Thai court only if it is subject to an international convention, treaty or agreement to which Thailand is a party, and only to the extent Thailand has agreed to be bound. Enforcement is conditional, not automatic. In practice the New York Convention is the gate almost every foreign award walks through.

Section 42: three years, and what you file

Section 42 carries both halves of the filing step. The party seeking enforcement applies to the competent court within three years from the day the award became enforceable. The same section lists the documents:

• the original arbitral award or a certified copy;
• the original arbitration agreement or a certified copy;
• a Thai translation of both, made by a translator who has taken an oath before the court, or certified by an authorised official or by a Thai embassy or consulate in the country where the award was made.

The translation requirement quietly sinks timelines. Sworn translation of a long award takes weeks, and a translation the court rejects sends you back to the start. Budget for it early. Our notes on legal interpreters in Thai courtrooms and on notarisation and legalisation cover what Thai courts accept.

Sections 43 and 44: when the court can refuse

Section 43 lists six grounds, and the burden sits on the party resisting enforcement, who has to prove them: incapacity of a party; an arbitration agreement not binding under the chosen law or, failing a choice, under Thai law; lack of proper notice of the tribunal’s appointment or of the proceedings; an award that goes beyond the scope of the agreement; a tribunal or a procedure that departed from what the parties agreed; and an award not yet binding, or set aside or suspended where it was made.

Section 44 lets the court dismiss the application on its own assessment, on two grounds: the dispute is not capable of settlement by arbitration under Thai law, or enforcement would be contrary to public policy.

Read together these mirror Article V of the New York Convention. The court checks the process, not the reasoning. A losing party who simply disagrees with the tribunal has nothing to argue.

Section 45: appeal goes straight to the Supreme Court

Section 45 bars appeals against a court order under the Act except on five grounds: recognition or enforcement is contrary to public policy; the order or judgment is contrary to a provision of law concerning public policy; the order or judgment does not match the award; a judge dissented; or the order concerns interim protective measures under section 16. The appeal goes to the Supreme Court, or to the Supreme Administrative Court where the case started there, skipping the Court of Appeal entirely. That is unusual, and worth knowing before you plan a timeline. Compare the ordinary route in our guide to Supreme Court appeals in Thailand.

Setting aside and refusing enforcement are not the same thing

Readers conflate these constantly, and every competing page lets them.

Setting aside runs under section 40. A party asks the court to annul an award, within 90 days of receiving it. Succeed and the award is destroyed for everyone.

Refusing enforcement runs under sections 43 and 44. The court declines to lend its machinery to this enforcement attempt. The award survives and the creditor can still try to enforce it in another country where the debtor holds assets.

Different applications, different sections, different deadlines, different consequences. Getting the label wrong loses time you may not have.

Public policy in Thai practice, and the Hopewell warning

Here is the part other pages leave out.

Thai courts have read “public policy” under sections 40 and 44 more expansively than courts in comparable New York Convention jurisdictions read Article V(2)(b), and the gap widens when the award runs against a state entity. Thai academic writing has criticised the pattern as excessive judicial intervention. If your counterparty is a Thai ministry, a state enterprise, or a concession grantor, price that risk in.

The Hopewell dispute shows the reach. A Thai Arbitration Institute tribunal awarded Hopewell roughly THB 11.8 billion against the Ministry of Transport and the State Railway of Thailand in September 2008 over the terminated Bangkok elevated road and rail concession. The Central Administrative Court annulled the award in March 2014 on prescription grounds, treating prescription as a matter of public policy. The Supreme Administrative Court reinstated the award in March 2019, refusing to apply a 1999 prescription period retroactively to a 1998 termination. A Constitutional Court ruling in March 2021 reopened the question, a retrial was granted, and on 18 September 2023 the Central Administrative Court held the claim time-barred under section 51 of the Administrative Courts Act. Reporting since indicates no payout has been made and further appeal has been raised.

Thirty years from concession to whatever this now is. The lesson is not that Thai enforcement fails. Commercial awards between private parties are enforced routinely. The lesson is that public policy in Thailand is a live door, and it opens widest against the state.

What the Supreme Court has actually done with that door

Decision 5560 to 5563/2562 is the one to read first, because it says what the standard is. The Court held that neither the Arbitration Act nor any other statute defines public order or the good morals of the people, so the court has to exercise judgment case by case, against the circumstances of the dispute and the values of the time. What it must weigh is the protection of the public benefit, public services and the direct interests of the public at large, and not the private interests of the party that lost. If your objection is really that the award went against you, this is the decision that says so.

Decision 6292/2561 shows the door opening only part of the way, which is the outcome most creditors should expect. The parties had chosen Thai law in a share purchase agreement, and the tribunal awarded compound interest, interest upon interest. The Court held that this offends section 224 paragraph two of the Civil and Commercial Code and so met the public policy test, and it refused enforcement of that part of the award only. The rest stood and the debtors remained liable on simple interest. A public policy objection does not have to destroy an award to be worth making, and it does not destroy one just because it succeeds.

Decisions 13570/2556 and 7635/2562 both turn on prescription, and they are the reason the Hopewell pattern is not a one-off. In 13570/2556 the tribunal miscalculated a limitation period because the claimant had typed the wrong year on its own claim form, and the Court set the award aside: enforcing an award that got prescription wrong would itself offend public order. In 7635/2562 the Court sent the case back because the lower court had answered the wrong question, asking whether the award was contrary to law instead of whether enforcing it would be contrary to public order, and it then fixed the date of loss for a stolen vehicle at the day the theft was reported rather than the day the car was handed over. Thai courts will look at how a tribunal reached a limitation date, through the public policy gate.

Decision 840/2561 is the warning for anyone enforcing against Thai real estate. The applicant was a limited company registered in the British Virgin Islands, so a foreign juristic person and an alien under clause 3 of Revolutionary Council Announcement No. 281 of 24 November 2515 (1972). A juristic person in that position can hold a condominium unit only if it fits one of the categories in section 19 of the Condominium Act B.E. 2522, and the route it relied on, section 19(4), requires a BOI investment promotion certificate. It did not have one, so it was not qualified to take title under its own purchase agreement. Winning the award is not the end of the question. Check that the asset can lawfully be held by the entity you are enforcing for.

After the order: the writ of execution

An enforcement order is permission, not payment. If the debtor still does not pay, you take the judgment to the Legal Execution Department (กรมบังคับคดี) of the Ministry of Justice, which has offices nationwide. It can attach and auction movable and immovable property, garnish bank accounts, salaries and receivables, and register liens over land.

Section 274 of the Civil Procedure Code requires the writ of execution to be applied for within ten years of the judgment becoming final. Applications filed after that are dismissed without anyone looking at the merits. Older sources cite section 271, the pre-2017 numbering, so check which edition you are reading.

So a foreign award holder runs two clocks in sequence: three years to petition for enforcement, then ten years to execute. Miss either and the award becomes a souvenir.

What it costs and how long it takes

Thai court filing fees are public and computable. For a monetary claim the fee is 2% of the amount claimed, capped at THB 200,000 for claims up to THB 50 million, with a further 0.1% on the excess above THB 50 million, plus about THB 1,000 for court delivery costs. The fee is paid on filing.

A worked example. You hold a US judgment for THB 30 million against a Thai company. There is no shortcut: you file fresh in Thailand. Court fee at 2% is THB 600,000, capped down to THB 200,000. Add sworn translation of the foreign judgment and the contract file, Thai counsel, and 12 to 24 months to first-instance judgment, longer if the defendant appeals. Then, on winning, up to ten years to execute.

The same THB 30 million as an arbitral award is a petition under section 42, decided on documents, usually inside a year unless the debtor mounts a section 43 challenge. That difference is the whole argument for the next section. If the debt itself is the problem rather than the forum, our debt collection service in Thailand is often the faster first move, and what to know before you go to court in Thailand covers what litigating here actually involves.

The exception: foreign divorce and family status

Family status escapes all of this, and the confusion it causes is unnecessary.

A foreign divorce judgment is not enforced through the courts. It is recorded administratively. Translate it into Thai, legalise it through the Department of Consular Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then present it to a district office, which can record the change in the family status register on form Kor Ror 22. Recording is not automatic and the registrar has discretion, but it does not involve re-litigating your divorce. People who have read that “Thailand does not recognise foreign judgments” often assume their divorce is void here. It is not. See divorce in Thailand with a foreign marriage.

Write the clause that prevents all of this

Everything above is a post-mortem. The cure costs ten lines at signature.

If you contract with a Thai counterparty and you may one day need to collect, choose arbitration over a foreign court. A foreign court judgment buys you a fresh trial in Thailand. An arbitral award buys you a petition. Then name, in the clause itself:

• the institution, by its full name: the Thai Arbitration Institute (TAI), the Thailand Arbitration Center (THAC), SIAC, HKIAC or the ICC;
• the seat, which fixes which courts supervise the arbitration;
• the language, because Thai-language proceedings change your cost base entirely;
• the governing law. Note that under the 2019 amendment foreign representatives still cannot act in arbitrations in Thailand where the dispute is governed by Thai law, so this choice decides who can represent you;
• the number of arbitrators, one for smaller disputes, three when the sums justify it;
• an escalation step, requiring negotiation or mediation before either side files.

Put it in the agreements that carry real money: loan agreements, promissory notes, NDAs and employment agreements. If you are still at the structuring stage, business setup in Thailand and the Foreign Business Act set out who you will be contracting as.

Frequently asked questions

Can a US court judgment be enforced in Thailand?

No. There is no treaty and no statute. You file a fresh civil action in a Thai court on the original claim, and the US judgment goes in as evidence, provided it is final, came from a court with subject-matter jurisdiction, and does not offend Thai public order or good morals.

Is an arbitration award from Singapore or London enforceable in Thailand?

Yes. Both are New York Convention seats, so section 41 paragraph 2 is satisfied. You petition a competent Thai court under section 42 with the award, the arbitration agreement and certified Thai translations.

How long do I have to enforce an arbitral award in Thailand?

Three years from the date the award became enforceable, under section 42. After you obtain the enforcement order, a second clock starts: ten years to apply for a writ of execution under section 274 of the Civil Procedure Code.

What documents do I need to file to enforce a foreign award?

The original award or a certified copy, the original arbitration agreement or a certified copy, and Thai translations of both, sworn before the court or certified by an authorised official or a Thai embassy or consulate in the country where the award was made.

Can a Thai court refuse to enforce an award, and on what grounds?

Yes. Section 43 lists six grounds the resisting party must prove, including incapacity, an invalid arbitration agreement, lack of proper notice, an award beyond the scope of the agreement, an irregular tribunal or procedure, and an award already set aside where it was made. Section 44 adds two the court applies itself: the dispute is not arbitrable under Thai law, or enforcement would be contrary to public policy.

Can I appeal if the Thai court refuses enforcement?

Only on the five grounds in section 45, and the appeal goes directly to the Supreme Court or the Supreme Administrative Court rather than through the Court of Appeal.

How much does it cost to sue in Thailand to enforce a foreign judgment?

The court filing fee is 2% of the claim, capped at THB 200,000 for claims up to THB 50 million, with 0.1% on any excess, plus roughly THB 1,000 in delivery costs. Translation and counsel are on top, and first-instance proceedings typically run 12 to 24 months.

Does Thailand recognise my foreign divorce?

It can, administratively. Translate and legalise the divorce judgment, then ask a district office to record it in the family status register on form Kor Ror 22. The registrar has discretion, but no court case is required.

Is arbitration or a Thai court jurisdiction clause better in a contract with a Thai company?

For a foreign party expecting to enforce against Thai assets, arbitration at a New York Convention seat is usually stronger, because the award is enforceable by petition while a foreign court judgment is not enforceable at all. A Thai court clause can make sense where the counterparty and every asset are Thai and the sums are modest.

My foreign judgment is five years old. Is it too late?

Possibly, and the answer turns on the original claim rather than on the judgment. Because the Thai case runs on the underlying cause of action, the Thai prescription period is measured from when that claim arose. Have Thai counsel check the position before you spend anything further.

How ThaiLawOnline can help

We have advised foreign clients on Thai law since 2006. If you are holding a judgment or an award and the assets are here, we will tell you plainly whether it is worth pursuing before you commit to fees: which route applies, what the prescription position looks like, what enforcement will cost, and what the debtor is likely to argue. If you are still at the contract stage, the arbitration clause is a short conversation that can save you a second trial. Start with our overview of dispute resolution in Thailand, then get in touch.

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.

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

Supreme Court Decision 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.

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: 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.

Supreme Court Decision 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. The obvious workaround does not work: a parent who voluntarily reduces their own income does not reduce the obligation, because variation under s.1598/39 requires a change of circumstances and a self-inflicted drop in earnings is not treated as one.

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 turns on the child’s age. While the child has not completed fifteen years, the action is 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. From fifteen the child must sue personally, and does not need the statutory representative’s consent to do it. Where the child has no statutory representative, or has one who cannot act, a close relative or the public prosecutor may ask the court to appoint a representative for the case. Section 1556 also runs a clock: a child who has reached majority must file within one year, which is the point our own Decision 3379/2565 turned on. 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 child custody in Thailand.

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. Section 1598/41 is the reason: the right to maintenance belongs to the child and cannot be renounced or transferred. A private agreement binds the parents between themselves, but it cannot bind the child, and it is court approval that makes the arrangement enforceable. 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.

See divorce in Thailand for the consent route and contested divorce 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 what to know before you go to court in Thailand 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. In practice a Thai court will hear the case even where the foreign parent does not appear, provided service was properly effected, 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 is wider than most guides say. It is not limited to the parents: any interested person who can show a change in circumstances, means or condition in life may ask the court to alter the maintenance, which brings in the child’s statutory representative and the public prosecutor as well. The court may cancel, reduce, increase or re-establish it. Spousal maintenance does not depend on a divorce at all: in Decision 2109/2567 the Supreme Court dismissed a husband’s divorce claim and held that the right to claim maintenance does not arise only when a divorce is filed, so a spouse who is not being maintained may claim it under Section 1598/38 on its own. The wife there had no regular work and an uncertain income. Decision 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. 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 pricing page.

Book a consultation 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.

Frequently asked questions

More from our own decision library

Two further decisions we hold in full Thai text bear on the questions this page raises most often.

• Decision 3772/2565, on a second bite. A father who once sued for legitimation by registration and dropped that claim on a settlement is not barred from bringing a fresh claim, because the first case ended in agreement rather than adjudication.
• Decision 3902/2568, on what happens to parental power when a parent dies. It vests in the survivor automatically, with no further court order. Worth reading alongside the point above that maintenance and parental power are separate questions.

Where to go next

• Child custody in Thailand, for parental power and who decides
• Legitimation and a father’s rights, the step that creates the duty
• Divorce in Thailand and 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 Thai Law Library. This guide is information, not legal advice on your matter.

Deportation from Thailand is not one procedure. It’s four. Most foreigners find that out too late, usually while sitting in a holding cell trying to work out who to call. This guide separates the four tracks. It explains the deportation regulation the Cabinet approved on 14 July 2026. And it sets out the appeal deadlines that actually exist in law. Some of those deadlines are 48 hours. One is 7 days. Miss them and the decision becomes final.

Status check, 19 August 2026. The Prime Minister’s Office Regulation on Deportation was approved in principle by the Cabinet on 14 July 2026. It is still with the Office of the Council of State. It has not been published in the Royal Gazette, and it is not yet in force. The B.E. year in its title is still blank. Everything in this guide about the current law applies today. The section on the new regulation describes a draft. We update this page when the Gazette text appears.

Four different things people call “deportation”

Here’s the confusion that costs clients money. English-language commentary treats deportation, removal, blacklisting and refused entry as one topic. Thai law treats them as four separate events, with different decision-makers and different appeal routes.

Get the wrong one and you file the wrong appeal, to the wrong official, after the wrong deadline.

Two points from that table matter more than anything else on this page.

First, a real deportation order is signed by the Minister of Interior, and the appeal goes to the Prime Minister. Not to the Minister of Interior. Not to Immigration. We see this stated incorrectly on competitor sites and in expat forums constantly. Section 8 of the Deportation Act is explicit, and the window is 7 days.

Second, the blacklist is the part that follows you. A deportation order under section 5 runs for a fixed period and the Minister can revoke it. But section 12(11) of the Immigration Act makes anyone previously deported a prohibited alien. That’s the disability that outlasts everything else.

What the new 2026 deportation regulation actually does

On 14 July 2026 the Cabinet approved, in principle, the Regulations of the Office of the Prime Minister on Deportation (ระเบียบสำนักนายกรัฐมนตรี ว่าด้วยการเนรเทศ). Deputy Prime Minister Pakorn Nilprapunt proposed it, following a Cabinet resolution of 16 June 2026 directing that removal procedures be streamlined.

Read the press coverage and you’d think Thailand had passed a new deportation law. It hasn’t. This is subordinate administrative machinery. It sits on top of two existing statutes: section 5 of the Deportation Act B.E. 2499 and section 54 of the Immigration Act B.E. 2522. No new power to deport is created. What changes is the plumbing, and the plumbing is where cases are won or lost.

The six grounds for referral

Clause 4 of the draft lists six categories. The trigger condition is that removal is necessary for public peace and morality. A foreign national who:

1. Enters or remains in the Kingdom unlawfully
2. Works unlawfully, in breach of the foreign workers legislation
3. Operates a business unlawfully, in breach of the Foreign Business Act
4. Forges official documents, or uses forged government documents
5. Commits an offence punishable by imprisonment of three years or more
6. Acts as principal, instigator or supporter of any of the above

Ground 3 deserves a hard look if you run a company here. It reaches Foreign Business Act breaches directly. That includes nominee shareholding arrangements, which the DBD has been enforcing aggressively through 2026. Say you’re a foreign director sitting on a structure you’ve been meaning to clean up. The new regulation turns that corporate compliance problem into an immigration problem. Our note on Thai nominee shareholders and the current crackdown covers the underlying exposure.

Ground 4 is the one that catches people who never intended to break anything. A forged bank letter, employment letter or lease filed in support of a visa application is a forged document, and the applicant is the person who filed it. If an agent prepared your paperwork, read what a visa agent may and may not lawfully do before you assume the file is clean.

Ground 5 needs care too. The Thai text says โทษจำคุกตั้งแต่ 3 ปีขึ้นไป, which points to the statutory penalty range of the offence, not the sentence you actually received. Several English outlets have reported it the other way round. That distinction is enormous. Plenty of offences carry a three-year maximum and are routinely disposed of with a fine or a suspended sentence. If the trigger is the penalty range, the net is far wider than the headlines suggest. We’re treating this as unsettled until the Council of State text is published.

The pre-release pipeline

This is the operational core of the draft, and it’s genuinely new:

1. The Department of Corrections must notify the Permanent Secretary for the Interior of foreign inmates and their details before release.
2. The Permanent Secretary submits the case to the Minister of Interior.
3. The Minister issues the deportation order without delay.
4. Removal is to the country of nationality. If nationality can’t be determined, to the last country of residence declared before entering Thailand.
5. Third-country transfers go through diplomatic channels. They require the deportee’s written consent, and the receiving state or organisation must agree to bear all care and transport costs.

Under the old practice, a foreign prisoner finished a sentence and then entered a slow, ad hoc process. Sometimes that meant release. Sometimes it meant months at the Immigration Detention Centre while nobody moved the file. The draft closes that gap by making the deportation decision happen before the sentence ends.

Here’s what that means in practice. If you’re defending a foreign national in a Thai criminal matter, the immigration consequence is no longer something to deal with later. It’s now part of the sentencing strategy. We’ve said for years that criminal defence for foreigners in Thailand is really two cases running in parallel. The draft makes that literal.

What the draft does not contain

An appeal.

That’s not an oversight on our part. The draft contains no appeal, no review, and no judicial safeguard. Formichella & Sritawat flagged it as “notably absent.” Asylum Access Thailand’s central submission asks the government to confirm that existing statutory appeal rights will still apply, precisely because the draft doesn’t say.

So the appeal architecture stays where it was: section 7 and section 8 of the Deportation Act, and section 22 of the Immigration Act. Whether the drafters intend those to survive a “streamlined” process is an open question. Until it’s answered, assume your only protection is the old law, and act on the old law’s deadlines.

What’s still unconfirmed

Two widely repeated claims about the draft don’t hold up to sourcing, and we won’t print them as fact:

• The “30 days after sentence completion” deadline. This appears across English-language coverage in early August 2026. It appears in no Thai-language Cabinet report we’ve read, and it’s absent from the leading law-firm analysis. Plausible, not confirmed.
• “The Thai state now pays for removals.” Same problem. It also sits awkwardly with section 55 of the Immigration Act. That section is still in force. It puts the cost on the carrier that brought you in, failing which on you. Whether the regulation displaces section 55, or just permits state funding as a backstop, is not established.

The Deportation Act B.E. 2499: the law that signs the order

The Deportation Act is seventy years old and very much alive. It was amended in B.E. 2507 and B.E. 2521, and it’s the parent statute for the 2026 draft. Four sections matter to you.

Section 5: the Minister’s power

The Minister may order the deportation of an alien where it’s necessary in the interest of public order or good morals (ความสงบเรียบร้อยหรือศีลธรรมอันดี). He sets the period. He may also revoke his own order.

Two things follow. The grounds are extremely broad, which is the point of the section. And because the Minister can revoke, a deportation order is not automatically permanent. Revocation is a real remedy, and it’s underused.

Section 5 does not apply to a person who has held Thai nationality by birth. That carve-out mirrors the constitutional position that a Thai national cannot be deported from the Kingdom.

Section 7: fifteen days, and an automatic stay

You’re entitled to a minimum of 15 days’ notice before deportation is carried out. And if you appeal, deportation is suspended until the Prime Minister rules. That stay is automatic. You don’t apply for it.

That single sentence is the most valuable thing in this article. An appeal filed in time stops the plane.

Section 8: seven days, to the Prime Minister

The appeal against a section 5 order goes to the Prime Minister, within 7 days. He may revoke the order, vary it, or substitute a work-placement order.

Be honest about the odds. This is a discretionary political remedy, not a court. But the stay under section 7 is worth having on its own, because it buys the time to run everything else. In our experience, the clients who do badly are the ones who spend the first week arguing with immigration officers. Argue later. File first.

Sections 9 bis to 11: the offences

Escaping detention, assisting an escape and harbouring an escapee are separate crimes carrying up to seven years. Returning to Thailand before the order expires is up to one year in prison, then re-deportation under section 10. There’s no clever workaround here. Don’t try one.

The Immigration Act B.E. 2522: removal, refusal and the 48-hour clock

Section 12 and the eleven prohibited categories

Section 12 lists eleven categories of alien who may not enter. The ones that bite expats are:

• s.12(6): prior imprisonment, with minor and negligent offences excepted
• s.12(7): conduct suggesting you’d be a danger to public safety or national security
• s.12(10): persons prohibited by the Minister under section 16
• s.12(11): persons deported by Thailand or by a foreign government, or whose right of stay has been revoked

Section 12(11) is why deportation and blacklisting are welded together. Once a deportation order exists, you’re a statutorily prohibited alien. Not because someone typed your name into a database, but because the statute says so.

Section 16 is the discretionary catch-all. The Minister may exclude an alien for national welfare, public peace, culture, morality or welfare. Note what section 22 says about that below.

Section 22: the 48-hour appeal, and its two blind spots

Where an officer finds you fall within section 12, he orders you in writing to leave the Kingdom. If you’re not satisfied:

• You appeal to the Minister, filing with the competent official within 48 hours of receiving the order (ภายในสี่สิบแปดชั่วโมง).
• The Minister must decide within 7 days.
• Removal is stayed pending the decision.
• The Minister’s order is final.

Now the two blind spots. There is no appeal under section 12(1) or section 12(10). No valid passport or visa, no appeal. Excluded by the Minister under section 16, no appeal. Those are the cases where the administrative route is closed at the door and the Administrative Court becomes the only option.

Forty-eight hours is brutal. It runs while you’re in a holding area, usually without your phone, often without a translator. If you’re detained at an airport, the single most useful thing you can do is get a lawyer’s number to someone outside. Our guide on what to do when a foreigner is arrested in Thailand sets out the first-hours checklist.

Section 54: removal, and the detention it authorises

Section 54 covers anyone who entered without permission, or whose permission expired or was revoked. The competent official deports them.

The important part is the cross-reference. Section 54 applies sections 19 and 20 mutatis mutandis. That’s where the detention power lives, and it’s why people end up held for long periods without anything that looks like a sentence. We deal with the timings in the next section.

Section 54 also lets the official release you instead, on security, or on security and bond, with reporting conditions. That option exists. Ask for it.

Section 55: who pays

The cost of removal falls first on the owner or master of the conveyance that brought you in. If there’s none, you pay. With permission you can arrange your own departure at your own expense. That’s usually the better outcome. You keep some control over timing and destination.

Section 81 and 82: the penalties

Overstay under section 81 is imprisonment of up to two years, or a fine of up to THB 20,000, or both. The familiar THB 500 per day capped at THB 20,000 is the administrative settlement applied on departure, not the section 81 penalty. They’re different things, and conflating them is how people talk themselves into thinking overstay is a parking ticket.

Section 82 punishes evading an official’s order. Evading a deportation order is up to two years and a fine of up to THB 20,000.

Detention pending removal: how long can they actually hold you?

There’s a clear statutory structure, and then there’s what happens.

Read that last row again. There is no statutory ceiling on total detention. The 12-day court authorisations can be renewed. That’s the mechanism by which detention at the Immigration Detention Centre becomes open-ended.

What the IDC is actually like

We’re not going to soften this. The Global Detention Project’s profile of the Bangkok IDC at Suan Phlu records a stated capacity of 1,100 and documents severe overcrowding. Former detainees have described cells shared with 200 to 250 people, with roughly half a square metre each. Assessments in 2023 and 2024 found cells below the 3 m² per detainee minimum standard, with no beds, tables or chairs. Healthcare was reported as deficient, with no doctor on duty in 2024. Nine deaths have been documented at the facility.

For a straightforward overstay where you’re paying your own way out, detention is usually short. Days. The long detentions happen when there’s no travel document, no country willing to accept the person, or an unresolved criminal matter. UN experts noted in 2024 that some detainees had been held for ten years.

Bail from the IDC

Temporary release is available. Based on UNHCR Thailand’s published guidance, the practice is:

• Bail is usually THB 50,000.
• You need a Thai guarantor, or a foreigner with legal residence.
• You must give the address where you’ll live after release.
• You report to the IDC monthly, with your guarantor. Miss it and bail is revoked.

Separately, section 54 itself lets the official release you on security or bond. If you’re dealing with a parallel criminal case, the mechanics differ again, and our guide to bail in Thailand for foreign nationals covers that side.

The blacklist: how long it lasts and how to get off it

Overstay bans: the official schedule

These come from Ministry of Interior Order 1/2558, in force since 20 March 2016. All ban periods run from your date of departure.

The gap between the two columns is the entire argument for walking into immigration yourself. A four-year overstay surrendered voluntarily is a five-year ban. The same overstay discovered on arrest is ten. We go through the tactics in detail on our page about Thailand visa overstay, criminal charges and blacklists.

Deportation and criminal conviction bans

There’s no published schedule for these, and you should be sceptical of anyone who gives you a confident number. Practitioners report entries in the immigration system running up to 100 years, which is effectively permanent. That’s a description of what appears in the database, not a statutory period. Serious convictions, particularly narcotics, violence, fraud and anything touching national security, are treated as lifetime exclusions in practice. If your matter involves narcotics specifically, see our page on Thailand drug laws, penalties and defence.

Three routes off the list

There is no single codified de-blacklisting procedure. There are three practical routes, and they’re very different animals.

A note on that fourth row. The “five years and then petition” formula circulates widely on law-firm websites. We could find no published regulation or Immigration Bureau order establishing it. Treat it as observed practice, not as a right you can insist on.

The Administrative Court route is the one most people overlook, and it’s the correct forum. A deportation order and a blacklist entry are administrative acts. That’s also why you won’t find much Supreme Court authority on them. We searched the Dika databases for 2568 and 2569 decisions on เนรเทศ and found nothing on point. If you want the background on how the court tiers fit together, see our explainer on criminal appeals and Supreme Court process in Thailand.

What to do in the first 48 hours

Order matters here. This is the sequence we give clients.

1. Get the order in writing, and photograph it. You cannot appeal what you can’t identify. You need to know whether it’s a section 22 order, a section 54 removal, or a Ministerial deportation order under section 5. The deadline depends entirely on which one it is.
2. Note the exact time you received it. The 48-hour clock under section 22 runs from receipt, not from arrest.
3. Get a message out. A lawyer’s phone number to any person outside the facility is worth more than an argument inside it.
4. Contact your embassy. They can’t stop a deportation. They can confirm your whereabouts, help with a travel document, and create a record that someone is watching.
5. File something in time, even if it’s short. A brief written appeal filed on day one beats a polished one filed on day three. Under section 7 of the Deportation Act, filing is what stops the removal.
6. Do not sign anything you can’t read. Ask for a translation. If a document is put in front of you in Thai only, that’s the moment to slow down.
7. Ask about release on bond. Section 54 permits it. Officials don’t always offer it.

Who’s newly exposed under the 2026 rules

In practice, the risk of deportation from Thailand isn’t spread evenly. The six grounds map onto some populations much more heavily than others.

• Foreign directors and shareholders in nominee structures. Ground 3 reaches Foreign Business Act breaches. This is the group whose risk profile changes most, and most of them don’t know it yet.
• Anyone working without the right permit. Ground 2. That includes remote workers and consultants who’ve convinced themselves that a laptop and a foreign client aren’t “work in Thailand.” See our page on work permit violations, penalties and deportation risk.
• Foreign nationals finishing a prison sentence. The pre-release notification pipeline is aimed squarely at you. The decision now gets made before you walk out.
• Long overstayers. Ground 1. Unchanged in substance, faster in execution.
• Anyone with a document problem. Ground 4 covers forged official documents. In practice this catches people who bought a “service” to solve a visa or licence problem and never asked how it worked.

A Thai spouse or Thai children won’t give you an automatic defence. But it’s material. It matters to a section 5 revocation request, and to a section 8 appeal to the Prime Minister. Family circumstances are exactly what a discretionary remedy exists to weigh. Our overview of spouse and dependent visas covers the status side, and Thai family law covers the rest.

Frequently asked questions

How ThaiLawOnline can help

Deportation from Thailand is time-critical work in a way most legal matters aren’t. The difference between keeping your life in Thailand and losing it is often a document filed on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday.

We act on urgent appeals against removal and deportation orders. We handle applications for release from immigration detention, section 5 revocation requests, blacklist removal petitions and Administrative Court challenges. We also advise on the immigration fallout of a pending criminal matter. Under the 2026 draft, that has to be handled at the start of a case rather than at the end.

If you or someone you know is currently detained, contact our team. Tell us the date and time the order was served. That’s the first thing we need.

Key takeaways

• Deportation, removal, blacklisting and refused entry are four different legal events. Identify which one you’re facing before you do anything else.
• A deportation order under the Deportation Act B.E. 2499 is signed by the Minister of Interior. The appeal goes to the Prime Minister within 7 days, and filing it stays the removal automatically.
• An Immigration Act order to leave carries a 48-hour appeal window. There’s no appeal at all under s.12(1) or s.12(10).
• Detention has no overall statutory cap. It runs on renewable 12-day court authorisations.
• Section 12(11) is what makes deportation stick. It converts you into a prohibited alien by operation of statute.
• The 2026 draft regulation creates no new appeal rights. It moves the deportation decision to before your prison release.
• The draft isn’t in force yet. Don’t plan around press reports of a 30-day rule or state-funded removals until the Gazette text lands.
• Surrendering voluntarily on an overstay roughly halves the ban compared with being arrested.

Signing a personal guarantee is one of the easiest ways for an expat in Thailand to acquire a debt that is not theirs. Banks routinely require directors, including foreign directors, to guarantee company loans; landlords and suppliers ask for guarantors; spouses guarantee each other’s borrowing. A recent Supreme Court decision, Dika No. 7982/2568, shows just how durable that liability is: even when the borrower’s own bankruptcy case was cancelled by the court, the guarantors remained fully on the hook.

The case: four guarantors and a defaulted export loan

A bank extended export credit to a company. Four people guaranteed the debt, and two of them also mortgaged their own property as additional security. The company defaulted, and the bank obtained a bankruptcy order against it. Later, the Central Bankruptcy Court cancelled the bankruptcy of the company (and of one guarantor-mortgagor) under Section 135(3) of the Bankruptcy Act B.E. 2483. The creditor then sued all four guarantors for repayment and enforcement of the mortgages.

The guarantors argued that the cancellation of the debtor’s bankruptcy relieved them too. The Supreme Court disagreed, and its reasoning is a compact lesson in Thai security law:

• Guarantors remain liable. Relief that a debtor obtains through bankruptcy proceedings is personal to the debtor. Under Section 698 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC), a guarantor is discharged only when the principal obligation itself is extinguished, by payment, release, or another cause that kills the debt. A bankruptcy discharge does not extinguish the debt; it only shields the debtor personally. So the creditor could still pursue every guarantor.
• A guarantor-mortgagor who was himself released by the bankruptcy court kept a limited shield. One defendant whose own bankruptcy had been cancelled under Section 135(3) was released from personal liability for any shortfall, but his mortgaged property still answered for the debt up to its value.
• The other mortgagor had agreed to broader terms and remained liable for any shortfall after the mortgage sale, as his contract provided.

The Court also applied Sections 95 and 136 of the Bankruptcy Act on the position of secured creditors and the effects of discharge.

How guarantees work under Thai law

A guarantee (ค้ำประกัน) is governed by CCC Sections 680 to 701. The guarantor promises the creditor to perform if the principal debtor defaults. Three features of the regime matter most in practice:

Since the 2014-2015 amendments to the CCC (Acts No. 20 and 21 amending the Civil and Commercial Code), individual guarantors enjoy meaningful protections: clauses that make an individual guarantor liable “as a joint debtor” are void, the guaranteed obligation must be specifically described (amount, purpose, period), and pre-agreed waivers of the guarantor’s statutory defences are unenforceable. But none of those protections touches the core rule confirmed in Dika 7982/2568: the guarantee survives the debtor’s personal escape routes.

Guarantor vs third-party mortgagor: not the same risk

The decision also draws a clean line between two roles that are often confused when banks paper a loan:

In Dika 7982/2568, the difference was decisive: one security provider walked away shielded from any shortfall, while the guarantors, signatories of broader undertakings, remained exposed for the full remaining debt.

What expats should take from this

First, treat a guarantee as a real debt, not a formality. If the borrower fails, Thai courts will enforce the guarantee even where the borrower has been through bankruptcy, debt collection against guarantors is routine and effective.

Second, negotiate the paper. If you must provide security, offering a specific asset as a third-party mortgagor limited to that asset is dramatically safer than an open-ended personal guarantee. If you sign a guarantee, cap the amount, limit the duration, and refuse shortfall clauses where possible. The wording of the loan agreement and the guarantee, not fairness, will decide the outcome.

Third, remember the 60-day notice rule. If a creditor sat on a default for months before contacting you, the CCC s.686 notice requirement (and its consequences for interest and accessory liabilities) is one of the few statutory defences an individual guarantor holds, alongside verifying that the underlying instrument, such as a promissory note, is itself enforceable.

Key statutory provisions

Civil and Commercial Code Sections 680, 686 and 698 (guarantee: form, notice of default, discharge); Bankruptcy Act B.E. 2483 Sections 95, 135(3) and 136 (secured creditors, cancellation of bankruptcy, effects of discharge), all as applied in Supreme Court decision 7982/2568.

Frequently asked questions

If the borrower goes bankrupt in Thailand, is the guarantor released?

No. Bankruptcy relief is personal to the debtor. Under CCC Section 698 and Dika 7982/2568, the guarantor remains liable because the underlying debt still exists.

Can a Thai bank make me liable as a “joint debtor” in a guarantee?

Not if you are an individual. Since the 2014-2015 CCC amendments, clauses making an individual guarantor liable as a joint debtor are void, though the guarantee itself remains valid.

What is the difference between guaranteeing a loan and mortgaging my property for someone else’s loan?

A guarantor’s exposure can reach their entire wealth; a third-party mortgagor generally risks only the mortgaged property, and is not liable for a shortfall after its sale unless they specifically agreed to be.

Does the creditor have to notify me before suing me as guarantor?

Yes. Under CCC Section 686 the creditor must give the guarantor written notice within 60 days of the debtor’s default. Late notice does not void the guarantee but limits accessory liabilities such as accrued interest.

Can foreigners act as guarantors in Thailand?

Yes, and they frequently must, banks commonly require foreign directors to guarantee their Thai company’s borrowing. The obligations are enforceable against them in Thai courts like any other contract.

This article was written and reviewed by Sebastien H. Brousseau, LL.B., B.Sc., practicing law in Thailand since 2004. Before you sign, or enforce, a guarantee in Thailand, have the document reviewed. Contact ThaiLawOnline for a consultation.

Disclaimer: this article is general information only and is not legal advice. Consult a qualified lawyer about your specific situation.

Many criminal cases in Thailand end not with a verdict but with a settlement. The accused pays compensation, the injured party withdraws the complaint, and the case dies. Expats are often on one side of this bargain, as the victim of a fraud who wants their money back, or as a defendant hoping that paying up will make a criminal charge disappear. A new Supreme Court decision, Dika No. 7211/2568, is a sharp reminder that this mechanism has a strict expiry date: once the judgment is final, no withdrawal, and no payment, can undo a conviction.

What happened in Dika 7211/2568

The defendant was convicted of fraud under Section 341 of the Thai Penal Code. The court initially showed leniency: her prison sentence was suspended on probation conditions under Section 56 of the Penal Code, including an obligation to compensate the victim in monthly instalments of 5,000 baht over 20 months.

She did not keep up the payments. The court revoked the suspension and ordered her to serve six months in prison, reduced to three months for her guilty plea. Only then, with the judgment already final, did she pay 80,000 baht in restitution, and the victim, now satisfied, asked to withdraw the criminal complaint. The lower courts accepted the withdrawal and dismissed the case.

The Supreme Court reversed. Relying on Section 39(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, it held that the withdrawal of a complaint in a compoundable offence extinguishes the prosecution only while the case is still pending. After the judgment becomes final, a withdrawal has no legal effect whatsoever. The three-month prison sentence was reinstated. The Court also confirmed, under Section 34 of the Probation Act B.E. 2559 (2016), the procedural framework governing challenges to probation revocation.

Compoundable offences: the legal background

Thai criminal law distinguishes between two categories of offences. Non-compoundable offences (ความผิดอาญาแผ่นดิน), such as theft in most forms, drug offences, or serious violence, are prosecuted in the name of the state, and the victim’s forgiveness does not stop the case. Compoundable offences (ความผิดอันยอมความได้), including ordinary fraud under Section 341, criminal defamation, embezzlement, and trespass, exist primarily to protect the injured person, so that person can end the prosecution by settling.

Under Section 39(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, the right to prosecute a compoundable offence is extinguished when the complaint is withdrawn or the parties lawfully compromise. This is the legal engine behind most criminal settlements in Thailand. What Dika 7211/2568 clarifies is the deadline built into that engine.

The timeline that decides everything

The practical meaning of the decision is best seen as a timeline:

A judgment becomes final (คดีถึงที่สุด) when the time to appeal expires without an appeal, or when the highest court seized of the case has ruled. From that moment, the case is no longer “pending” and there is nothing left for a withdrawal to extinguish. Late restitution may still matter for other purposes, it can support a petition for a royal pardon or improve the offender’s position in parole and sentence-reduction decisions, but it cannot erase the conviction.

The second lesson: probation conditions are not optional

The defendant in Dika 7211/2568 lost her freedom twice over. Her original sentence was suspended, the court had already given her the benefit of a suspended sentence under Section 56 of the Penal Code, on the condition that she compensate her victim in instalments. When she stopped paying, the suspension was revoked and the prison term became real.

Thai courts routinely attach compensation schedules to suspended sentences in fraud and embezzlement cases. Defendants sometimes treat these schedules casually, assuming that partial payment or a later lump sum will smooth things over. This decision shows the opposite: non-compliance triggers revocation, and once revocation and the resulting sentence are final, even full payment plus the victim’s forgiveness comes too late.

What this means for expats

If you are the injured party

Your leverage is greatest while the case is alive. A criminal complaint for fraud or embezzlement is often the most effective debt-recovery tool in Thailand precisely because the defendant can only make the case go away by satisfying you before final judgment. Use that window: negotiate a settlement that is paid, not merely promised, before you withdraw, and record the settlement in writing before the court where possible.

If you are the defendant

Settle early. The realistic opportunities are at the police stage, during trial, or at the latest while an appeal is pending. Waiting until after conviction to “fix it with money” is a strategy the Supreme Court has now explicitly closed. And if you receive a suspended sentence with conditions, treat every condition, payment schedules, reporting, community service, as strictly binding, because revocation proceedings move quickly and, as this case shows, are effectively irreversible once final. If you are detained during proceedings, bail remains a separate question from settlement.

Key statutory provisions

Frequently asked questions

Can a criminal case in Thailand be dropped if I pay the victim back?

Only for compoundable offences (such as ordinary fraud, defamation, embezzlement or trespass), and only while the case is still pending. Once the judgment is final, Dika 7211/2568 confirms that a withdrawal of the complaint has no legal effect.

What is a compoundable offence in Thai law?

An offence that the law treats as primarily injuring a private person, allowing that person to end the prosecution by withdrawing the complaint or compromising under Section 39(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code. Serious offences against the state or public order are not compoundable.

When does a Thai criminal judgment become final?

When the appeal period expires without an appeal being filed, or when the final court (usually the Supreme Court) has ruled. After that point the case is no longer pending and can no longer be settled away.

If my Thai suspended sentence has payment conditions and I miss payments, what happens?

The court can revoke the suspension and order you to serve the original prison term. Paying later does not automatically restore the suspension, in Dika 7211/2568 even full restitution after finality could not undo the revocation.

Does late restitution help at all after a final conviction?

It cannot erase the conviction, but it may be considered in petitions for a royal pardon, in parole decisions, and in collective sentence reductions under royal pardon decrees.

This article was written and reviewed by Sebastien H. Brousseau, LL.B., B.Sc., practicing law in Thailand since 2004. If you are negotiating a settlement in a Thai criminal matter, as victim or accused, timing is decisive. Contact ThaiLawOnline for advice before the window closes.

Disclaimer: this article is general information only and is not legal advice. Consult a qualified lawyer about your specific situation.