Question: Can Thai wife in USA call the local Land Office to ensure a property sale from the seller to my wife is conducted while the wife can't be there in person (will have her Aunt stand-in as our representative)?

 

Longer story: My wife and I live in the US and visit Thailand once a year. The land is in a small village in Maha Sarakhman where the whole Moo is basically all family/cousins that settled there 3 generations ago. One of the more distant relatives will sell 1 rai to my wife (thai) for a reasonable price. He has a chanote for it so everything is on the up and up (as best I can tell). We're just starting the process but he will want to sell in the next month or two, but we won't be going back to visit Thailand until at least a year from now (left there right before they basically closed the country down in April), so naturally we won't be able to go to the land office in person. 

 

Our initial plan is to have her Aunt do any of the paperwork/in-person stuff in the land office required, but we naturally want to ensure the wife's name is put on the title. While we trust the Aunt, we don't want to get into a situation where the Land Office says they can't put it in the wife's name and have to put it in the Aunt's name. We will go that route if we have to, but we'd hate for anything to happen where the aunt is dumb and some emergency springs up and the aunt borrows against it before our next trip to Thailand where we can again go the Land Office and transfer it from the Aunt to the wife's name.

 

My plan is for my wife to call the local Land Office, but we wanted to see if anyone had any experience in a similar situation to give us a little ammunition in case the land office just blows us off.

 

 

Yes it can be done. I have transferred land from my company to a Thai citizen that was overseas and there were no hiccups.

 

The Land Dept. has a specific form (Tor. Dor. 21) for that purpose which requires original signatures plus signed copies of ID card and Tabien Baan. So you will need to at least courier the signed documents from the US to Thailand. It's not going to work just with a phone call.

 

Some info here: https://www.samuiforsale.com/other-miscellaneous/thai-english-land-office-power-of-attorney.html

 

I notice that on that web page it says the following: 

 

7) A power of attorney done outside Thailand must be certified by an embassy or a consulate or a notary public.

 

We didn't have any consular certification done and I am not sure how the land dept. would verify whether the person giving power of attorney was in Thailand or not. Often times a small gratuity can make those problems go away. Some kind of connection to someone at that particular land office would help.

What a fantastic first response! Thank you so much. I do see it says a notary is okay. I wonder if they would take a US notary (or just pay some money to have her aunt do if it's like the US and can go to a bank to get a notary stamp in Thailand). We don't have a consulate close to us but I guess a 4 hour car ride to Chicago and a weekend vacation would be better than paying the $1000 US for a plane ticket to do it in person.

Is there not a condition that when a Thai wife married to a foreigner buys land, she has to confirm it is her own money, and the foreigner has to sign a document to say that he has no financial interest in the land being bought.

Regards the above replies, yes and yes.

 

You will need a signed original POA, ID and tabian baan copies of both involved. 

2 hours ago, prakhonchai nick said:

Is there not a condition that when a Thai wife married to a foreigner buys land, she has to confirm it is her own money, and the foreigner has to sign a document to say that he has no financial interest in the land being bought.

strangely, my ex-wife did not bring me

 

but she managed , I just found out at land department, she gave my money to her dad, put it in his name and a few years later, he put it in her name

 

you know, just in case there was a divorce that I could claim NOTHING at all

 

 

On 6/2/2020 at 9:07 AM, thedemon said:

7) A power of attorney done outside Thailand must be certified by an embassy or a consulate or a notary public

Just be prepared that it can be required that translation and overseas consulate need to be endorsed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 
(meaning also that a US based translator should be endorsed, I worked around that by getting an overseas Notary endorse document with certified translation attached)

3 hours ago, prakhonchai nick said:

Is there not a condition that when a Thai wife married to a foreigner buys land, she has to confirm it is her own money, and the foreigner has to sign a document to say that he has no financial interest in the land being bought.

It is my understanding that it is wiser to gift the money for sole purpose of buying the property.

So in case it does not work out, the gift can be undone.

No offense here but do you think that lands going anywhere ? Hold off until you get back to Thailand . 

You really don’t need to go to the Royal Thai Consulate in Chicago in person. Your can have your wife’s signature on the power of attorney document from the land department notarized and send by mail to the consulate and they can mail it back to you. The below link explains the requirements though it is in Thai.

 

http://www.thaiconsulatechicago.org/pages-certified-signature.html

 

You can have those documents couriered to Thailand to the PoA grantee and the sign it which can then be used at the land department for transferring the deed. It is important that the form from the land department is used from the link below. My wife has done it and it went well without having to make any kind of donations.

 

https://www.dol.go.th/Documents/td21.pdf

2 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

No offense here but do you think that lands going anywhere ? Hold off until you get back to Thailand . 

There is that aspect H508--& (I take you know the area) .. because..It is a F#@king boring place to live..........

I can see no reference in the original post stating whether the poster is Thai or Farang. It has always been my understanding that as soon as a Thai lady marries a Farang she loses the right to buy land ! Obviously there must be ways around this, it is extremely xenophobic ????

3 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

No offense here but do you think that lands going anywhere ? Hold off until you get back to Thailand . 

Relative might currently be in need of funds, selling the land maybe his preferred option, in which case if he cannot sell the land to the op he may sell to another, also he may resolve his issue an alternative way, thus no further requirement to sell, and the price would then increase as the immediate need for cash diminishes ????

59 minutes ago, phantomfiddler said:

I can see no reference in the original post stating whether the poster is Thai or Farang. It has always been my understanding that as soon as a Thai lady marries a Farang she loses the right to buy land ! Obviously there must be ways around this, it is extremely xenophobic ????

That was certainly the case some 30 years ago. The house I first "paid for" could not be in my wife's name so had to be in her father's name.  I protected my money though by drawing up a mortgage contract with father, which was endorsed on the chanote.  Nowadays a Thai wife of a foreigner can buy land, as long as it is clearly stated that it is not bought with farang money.

1 hour ago, sanuk711 said:

There is that aspect H508--& (I take you know the area) .. because..It is a F#@king boring place to live..........

Yep and who’s going to buy it if they don’t ? I doubt there is a line around the block wanting to buy it . 

15 hours ago, prakhonchai nick said:

Is there not a condition that when a Thai wife married to a foreigner buys land, she has to confirm it is her own money, and the foreigner has to sign a document to say that he has no financial interest in the land being bought.

When my wife bought land in 2007, I was ready and willing to sign such a document. However, because my wife never changed her name on her Thai ID card and it still indicated that she wasn't married (we are legally married in the US) I was told I didn't need to sign that document.

 

To the OP, does your wife's Thai ID card indicate that she is married? Did she change her last name on that ID card? If so then you'll probably need to sign the document prakhonchai nick referenced.

Thanks for the continued discussion! To answer some questions:

1) I am a US citizen with a thai wife. We are only married in the US and we have not married in Thailand (yet). Also, we knew about the problem of her taking my last name, so she has not legally changed her name here in the US, nor in Thailand. So, as far as Thailand is concerned, I don't even think her being married to a US Citizen will even come up...

 

2) Reason for buying the land now is two-fold - A) The thai guy wants the money soon because he's splitting up with his thai wife and needs the money to separate from her as they're living in her house. They are reasonably well off so he has another smaller house somewhere else that he will refurb and isn't going to come back to the little ol' village after living in Buriram city for the last 20 years. And B) another cousin also wants to buy the land because it adjoins her property but she is looking for the family discount price where we'll pay his asking price so he'll sell to us.

 

Ultimately, it's only 1 rai and he's selling for 100,000 baht which is not money that I'll miss in any way. It has road and electric access and won't need much, if any dirt. This property will actually be used to increase the currently vacant property in my wifes dad's name and allow it to have easy access to the road (long story but the the older relatives family got in a huge argument and the one built a wall across their property to make the wife's family land not have any road access lol - image of what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/ZRnrXvj). My wife's plan is to build a small home there for her parent's to retire in since they both work in Bangkok and the current home on their family property is basically falling apart and is unlivable.

 

In no way am I actually planning to live on this land, it will be part of her sin sod when we have a thai marriage ceremony in 1.5-2 years. The wife is being reasonably smart and not giving her parents any of the money but instead buying this land, among other things, to help them out later. I am 20 years away from retirement so who knows what will happen by then - this is certainly not land for me (er, my wife).

 

I'll have to read over the links and replies more closely. Hopefully the land office is able to explain it in such a way that the aunt and my wife can figure out and they don't just "may pen rai" it...

On 6/4/2020 at 10:20 PM, donx said:

When my wife bought land in 2007, I was ready and willing to sign such a document. However, because my wife never changed her name on her Thai ID card and it still indicated that she wasn't married (we are legally married in the US) I was told I didn't need to sign that document.

 

To the OP, does your wife's Thai ID card indicate that she is married? Did she change her last name on that ID card? If so then you'll probably need to sign the document prakhonchai nick referenced.

my ex-wife did just that ... pretended that we were not married ... still had MISS on the id card, even with 10 immigration extensions...

 

thai will abuse the law in their favor and it is in their favor