cmarshall

The legal process in this case is a civil law suit in which the plaintiff seeks damagers from the defendant. It therefore would hardly be justified to deny the plaintiff the opportunity to reach a settlement with the defendant out of court. This was not a criminal legal case. The statute of limitations on any crime that may been committed has long since passed.

It is not necessarily true that a legal will is necessary. I am thinking of the home country, rather than Thailand, at the moment. For instance, a US will is not necessary if the only assets in the US are financial accounts with a Transfer on Death (TOD) provision. Such assets do not go through probate which would relieve the surviving Thai spouse of the headache of handing probate from outside the US.

You don't have to be an "emeritus member" to do a domestic wire transfer from SDFCU to BBK Bank, but if you aren't it will cost you $20 each instead of $6. You could also do an international wire transfer to any other Thai bank for a cost of $25 per. Some brokerage firms, such as Fidelity and Vanguard, offer free domestic wire transfers, but I wouldn't recommend those particular brokerage firms, because they would freeze your account if they got wind that you became an expat.

The better solution is State Department Federal Credit Union. They offer accounts to expats. If you have your pension, either SS or any pension, direct deposited into your SDFCU account every month then you qualify for "emeritus member" status, the chief benefit of which is that you can do domestic wire transfers at $6 a pop. Then if you have an account at Bangkok Bank you can do a wire transfer, not an ACH transfer, to that account in any amount. The funds will be available at BKK Bank first thing in the morning of the next business day. BBK Bank is the only Thai bank that is also a US bank with an ABA number, which is required for a domestic wire transfer. These transfer do get coded as foreign transfers on a bank statement from BKK Bank. I use the income method myself for visa renewal.

The OP's plan is likely full of holes. He has to keep his sealed document up-to-date at all times. He hasn't tested it to see if she is going to understand and be able to carry out all the steps necessary. My guess is that it won't work very well. The problem is that he doesn't trust his wife/girlfriend sufficiently. If that's the case, then he should dump her for someone he does trust. Then he should incorporate whichever wife/girlfriend has passed the test into his household finances. That means access to all accounts such as bank accounts, brokerages, credit cards, online billing, transfer, and payment procedures, access to his mobile phone, access to his online contacts for notification purposes, and so on. He should also prepare a manual of procedures that she will have to carry out in the event of his death or disability. If she is going to inherit his assets in his home country the process for obtaining the necessary documentation to carry that out should be obtained from his consulate and documented. Then going forward, they should carry out every financial step together at all times. The goal is that in the event of death or debilitating interest she should be able to continue to run the household without missing a beat. The only way that can happen is if she has been carrying out all those steps already for years together with the OP. Sound like a lot of work? It certainly is. That's what it means to have responsibility for someone else.

If the OP is over fifty with monthly revenue coming into Thailand of at least ฿65,000 then the retirement visa is more straightforward. They don't hit you up with new requirements out of the blue. In my experience at Chaeng Wattana, they just check the bank statement for qualifying transfers for every month. Then you sign all the documents warning against various infractions and then you are done. You don't have to go back a month later to get the stamp in your passport. Immigration doesn't seem to like the marriage visa. In the years when I was doing the marriage visa the officers were forever suggesting that I switch to retirement. I have no idea why.

I think they are failing to register the difference between "unconscious" and "permanently unconscious."

I do understand English grammar and you can take that information to the bank. If others have other opinions on the subject, they are wrong.

Whether you agree or not that is the fact of the matter. "Less" applies to uncountable things, e.g. less noise, less support, less water, less knowledge. "Fewer" applies to countable things, e.g. fewer people, fewer problems, fewer books.

Even if you are not required to file, it is always a "safe harbor" to file and you should do so. That prevents the IRS from sending you a letter asking where your returns are and assures that you will get govt money if any is ever distributed again.

The only Medicare programs for which an expat can register are Parts A and B. All other programs require a US residential address. If an expat were nevertheless to register for Part D, Medicare Advantage, etc. by using a US address where he does not reside, he would be committing fraud.

One person fewer, actually.

You are getting ever more ridiculous still. Yes, there is some difference between a person who is dead and a person who has actually been pronounced dead by the medical authorities. But that is not to say that a person whose heart has stopped beating and who is therefore dead, but who has not yet been pronounced dead by the medical authorities is merely "unconscious." He is dead with a small chance of being revived. How do someone get this confused in what I assume is his native language?

You left out the all important currency symbol.

That's just a ridiculous statement, isn't it? A dead person is dead, not unconscious. "Unconscious" implies the person is still alive, i.e. with a pulse, but not responsive. While it's true that dead people are not responsive either, that does not mean that they are unconscious. They are dead. In this context a dead person is one without a pulse, i.e. the heart has stopped beating. If you do your own search you will find that it is not recommended to do CPR on a person with a pulse, although the risk of injury resulting to the person from doing so is currently downplayed by comparison with past advice. I don't find believable statistics on the success rate of CPR. Most discussions are just recommendations that CPR will always improve the chances of survival, which may be true, but it's hard to tease out a convincing case for just how effective CPR. It reminds me of all the discussions that rail against drunken driving which emphasize how much being drunk increases your chance of having an accident. That's true, but they basically never report just what your risk of an accident actually is if you drive home tonight, just this one time, drunk. But someone did calculate it. Turns out to be 0.001%. Shocking, isn't it? I am in favor of CPR and opposed to drunken driving, but I don't think those values excuse misleading statistics.

The report contradicts itself, so we cannot know what really happened. It said the victim was unconscious, which means alive, heart still beating, but unresponsive. If that is indeed the case, then CPR is definitely contraindicated. On the other hand the report also claimed that her pulse was restored after five minutes. That would imply that she had no pulse and was therefore dead. That is when you should attempt CPR. The reason that I believe the reality was that she always had a pulse is that reviving a dead person via CPR is extremely rare. People have whole careers as EMTs without ever witnessing a revival of a dead person.

It only indicates that the obviously confused writer thought so. CPR is only done on a dead person and it almost never starts the heart up again. I had CPR instruction from someone who had been an EMT for many years. She had performed CPR many times, but it never succeeded in restarting the heart.

If the victim's heart was still beating then performing CPR should not be done, because it's dangerous. In this case the victim survived despite the efforts of the first responders, which could have killed him.

CPR is not administered to an unconscious person whose heart is therefore still beating, but only to a person whose heart has stopped.

I should add that AARP's link is the only reference that I have found that mentions a national health insurance as the basis for an exemption to the late enrollment penalty for Part B. AARP is generally well-informed, but they are not the authoritative source for Medicare's regulation. So, you should verify this strategy if you can with Medicare itself. I will do that, but haven't done it yet.

Yes, you can sign up for Part B at age 65. In fact, if you are already collecting SS benefits, you will be signed up for it automatically. If you aren't collecting SS, then you fill out this form to sign up: https://www.cms.gov/cms40b-application-enrollment-part-b There is an exception to the penalty for not paying into Part B at age 65. If you are covered by an employer's insurance package at that time, which may not be very likely, you will not have to pay any penalty if you later enroll in Part B. Perhaps a more likely exception is if you are covered by the national insurance of any other country, which would also exempt you from the subsequent penalty for late enrollment in Part B. You might look into the possibility of getting coverage in the Greek national insurance plan. I am planning to move to France next year where, after a short initial period, I will be covered by the French Sécurité Sociale. At that point I will quit paying into Part B. You can delay Medicare enrollment in Part B (and avoid its premiums) if you have health care coverage from: An employer for which you (or your spouse) actively work and which provides group health insurance for you (or both of you) The public national health service of the country where you live — regardless of whether you or your spouse works for an employer or are self-employed The sponsoring organization of voluntary service you provide abroad (for example, the Peace Corps) https://www.aarp.org/health/medicare-qa-tool/medicare-if-living-outside-united-states/

As a US citizen you will never be "locked out" of the US Medicare system, but if you don't sign up for Part B at age 65 and later repatriate for whatever reason you will have a lifelong penalty for the years after age 65 that you weren't paying for Part B. So, it is prudent to sign up for Part B at age 65 as expected. For all the other other Medicare options such as Part D, Medicare Advantage, etc. you are not eligible for them unless you reside in the US. However, unlike Part B, if you do repatriate at some point you will have a 60-day period to sign up for any of the other Medicare packages without penalty and without exclusion of pre-existing conditions.

I don't want an expensive phone that lasts a long time since the improvements every few years seem to be greater than the differences between mid-range and top-of-the-line phones at a point in time. So, I would rather buy a new mid-range phone every three years or so.

So, there is a new app that works with GPS driving apps. Some bright light mapped 57 trillion ten foot squares to the entire surface of Earth. Each ten foot square also has a unique identifier in code. For instance, one ten foot square right at Door # 2 of Government Complex Building B in Chaeng Wattana has the unique identifier of ///congas.moment.chose. So, if you download the app, What3words, and enter that code in the aerial view, for example, there you are at the door to your next visa extension. What3words is a free download for IOS and Android. Or you could get it as a standard feature of the Lamborghini Huracan for $200,000. What3words interfaces by forwarding its three word codes to apps like Grab, Waze, Line, and others. Definitely a step forward. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/business/lamborghini-huracan-what3words.html

I mean the Japan that has a cumulative 15.09 Covid deaths per hundred thousand which compares favorably with 273.14 for the US and 236.80 for the UK.