Legal 30 Year Lease

[Gary A]

Now I am getting conflicting opinions on this. One friend says if your wife is the lease holder a lease with her isn't worth the paper it is written on. On the other hand I would hate to lease a piece of property, build a house then have the lease holder get the house after I am dead and gone. Why is everything so difficult here? I am a skeptic but if, BIG IF she stays with me until the end she would have nothing if someone else held the lease. Does anyone have the answer to this one?

This is not the Philippines but a friend of mine lost his house there when he and his wife divorced. She held the lease on that property. That also makes me wonder if Thailand is possibly the same.

[Sumitr Man]

Gary:

So far as I am aware, the confussion here lies on the interpretation of 2 provisions of the Civil and Commerical Code of Thailand, one of which I'm unsure about, the other of which I believe I have fairly strong grounds.

Anyhow, the first provision of the CCC in question is Section 1469, which reads as follows:

Any agreement concluded between husband and wife during the marriage may be voided by either of them at any time during the marriage, or within one year from the day of dissoultion of the marriage; provided that the rights of third parties acting in good faith are nor affected thereby.

As Section 1469 follows immediately after the sections in the CCC pertaining to ante/pre-nuptial agreements, some argue that this provisions should only be read in connection therewith. Others, OTH, say that as an ante/pre-nuptial agreement can only be written before marriage (Section 1466) this makes no sense and the provision applies to any agreement entered into between a husband and wife. To be frank, I'm not entirely sure if the second of these two opinions is not the correct one - and, what's more, I have never heard of a Thai wife invoking S. 1469 to nullify a 30 year lease agreement.

That said, IMO, either way it could be cited in Thai court pleadings (assuming the wife knew of it, of course).

The second provision of the CCC that raises a question is Section 1476 sub-section (3), which provides that in the managing immovable property that could be considered Sin Somoros to the effect of letting property for more than 3 years, both the husband and the wife have to sign the lease agreement as lessors.

Now, the problem I have with accepting this second one is simple - any property owned in a household containing a farang cannot be considered Sin Somoros (which is the joint martial property of the husband and wife) as the husband, by virtue of being a farang, cannot have a claim over land. QED: Land cannot be Sin Somoros; thus S. 1476 doesn't apply.

Please note though that I'm not a lawyer and you really should get a lawyer to tell you if this is right or wrong. But if you do speak to a Thai lawyer, I think these are the 2 provisions of the CCC he'll be looking at. If not, please let me know

SM

[slimdog]

Gary

If you read the following three articles you should have a slightly better understanding on property leases in Thailand. Bear in mind the first two are written by companies trying to sell their services. But between the three you should get an idea as to the rights,obligations and pros/cons of leasing property. Anyway I hope it helps:

http://www.thailand-lawyer.com/land_purphase.html

http://www.searesland.com/faq/ownership_thai_spouse.htm

http://www.thaivisa.com/buy_land_thailand.0.html

[Gary A]

Thanks for the information but I'm still confused. My girlfriend and I are not married yet and I'm not really crazy about getting married. We live in her house which sits on two rai of land. She has the house papers with the property surveyed and the concrete survey markers are in place. I recently decided I wanted privacy and a two meter high block fence is about 85% finished. 240 meters of block fence takes a lot of concrete, block and steel re-bar. The reason I mention the fence is because the house paper shows the property line straight. It appears that her neighbor has moved the front marker over about 2 or 3 meters. My girlfriend is a tough lady but she told me that if that land is that important to the neighbor that he has to steal it he can keep it. She simply didn't want the hassle of getting the government involved and causing hard feelings with the neighbor. The fence is now crooked like a dog leg. The law apparently means very little even to the Thai people. If you talk to a lawyer who sets up companies, he will tell you everything is legal 100% but if you talk to another who is not in that business, he will tell you another story. Legal documents not written in the Thai language are totally useless and are NEVER legal. I can't read Thai so who do you believe. I have come to the conclusion that the laws are enforced very selectively. If you piss anyone off you are just plain screwed. There WILL be a law that can legally take you to the cleaners.

Since nothing is black and white I have come to the conclusion that the best way is to not spend more than you can comfortably walk away from. The reason I am so skeptical is that I was cheated to the tune of about a million and a half baht and could do nothing about it even thought I had (legal?) papers written in English. They meant nothing.

[aletta]

When i arrived here many years ago an old timer told me:-

Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

[dr_Pat_Pong]

When i arrived here many years ago an old timer told me:-

Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That is quoted on here several times a week

[Sumitr Man]

Legal documents not written in the Thai language are totally useless and are NEVER legal.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry mate; but this is urban legend. What is true is this:

* a document in English is legally binding in Thailand. However, if you wish to enforce the agreement by way of court proceedings you need to have the agreement, or the material provisions of the agreement, translated into Thai;

* if a document is written in Thai and English, the Thai document has precedence over the English document if there is a discrepancy between the two.

SM

OTH - I heard that most of the loan agreements in the TPI [debt restructuring] case were in English, being that most of the company's lenders were foreign financial institutions - maybe this is why it was such a cock-up