Land Ownership For Thai Citizen Married To A Foreigner

[TRIPxCORE]

It is my understanding that if a Thai citizen marries a foreigner but retains Thai citizenship they are still able to buy land and/or property in Thailand. My Thai wife is trying to tell me that the Thai government now is able to check if a Thai citizen has married a foreigner and if the government sees that the Thai citizen has indeed married a foreigner, they will no longer allow the Thai citizen to own or buy any real estate, business, or property in Thailand. Any one know if this true?

[Crossy]

Unless something has changed very recently.

That law was rescinded some years back, Thais married to foreigners are not restricted in any way from land ownership.

That said, a lot of the smaller land offices still haven't actually discovered the change so you could run in to problems

[TRIPxCORE]

The reason I ask is because it was always my understanding that unless the Thai citizen renounced their citizenship, they were always able to buy or own anything in Thailand they wanted.

My wife has a sister that is married to a foreigner. Recently, her sister went to a local government office to have some land transferred into her name that her father is giving to her. Apparently some government official told her that they knew she was married to a foreigner and because of that, they could not let her put the land in her name. I had never heard of anything like this before so I was curious if there was a new law recently passed or something.

[Mario2008]

As said, no change.

But they do require the foreign spouse to sign a statement that the land will not be his and he has no claim on it. (or something of that nature)

[stgrhe]

The law changed in 1999, if I am not mistaken, and the reason for allowing Thai women, married to foreigners, to buy land and condominiums was that it was deemed unconstitutional to forbid Thai women that right.

[kdc1899]

since half of thais are chinese and the other half are lao,cambo,malay and burmese

the

law

was

sorta

silly

[p_brownstone]

As already mentioned many local Land Offices - or Officers - are simply unaware of the change.

Your Sister-in-Law should politely ask to speak to a Senior Officer - if he is still not up-to-date, an online search at the relevant Government Departments Website should turn up a copy of the currrent legislation.

Patrick

[Arkady]

The law changed in 1999, if I am not mistaken, and the reason for allowing Thai women, married to foreigners, to buy land and condominiums was that it was deemed unconstitutional to forbid Thai women that right.

You are right, although this was a change to the ministerial regulations, since the Land Code itself has no provisions regarding Thais with foreign spouses. Prior to 1999 the ministerial regulations prohibited the transfer of land to a Thai woman, if it were known that she was married to or cohabiting with a foreigner. However, Thai men with foreign wives were allowed to own land without restriction. This was deemed inconsistent with the 1997 constitution that prohibited discrimination against Thai citizens on grounds of sex, race religion etc. Therefore the ministerial regulations were revised in 1999 so that Thais with foreign spouses would be treated equally and lifted the prohibition from Thai women with foreign husbands. Since the Land Code is silent on the subject of foreign spouses, Thais with foreign spouses are potentially liable to be charged as nominees buying land for their spouses, unless they can prove that they bought the land from their own resources or with loans from a third party. To avoid difficulties for Land Offices having to check the financial backgrounds of Thais with foreign spouses, the ministry came up with a band aid in the form of the declaration that needs to be signed by a Thai/foreign couple (legally married or just cohabiting). If you jointly sign this declaration that the funds used to purchase the land were the Thai spouse's own funds and that the property will not form part of the conjugal property (to be divided in the event of divorce), you have satisfied all legal requirements for a Thai married to a foreigner to buy land. The Land Dept will probably not give you a copy of your signed declaration, so it is advisable to bring along a camera to take a picture of it for your records.

The situation with condos is different since the Condominium Act allows foreigners to own condos up to 49% of the usable space in a condominium building. However, once 49% of the usable space in a condo building has been registered in the names of foreigners, the balance of 51% of the units are treated the same as land and the above rules apply.

[Arkady]

As already mentioned many local Land Offices - or Officers - are simply unaware of the change.

Your Sister-in-Law should politely ask to speak to a Senior Officer - if he is still not up-to-date, an online search at the relevant Government Departments Website should turn up a copy of the currrent legislation.

Patrick

The relevant ministerial regulations are quite easy to find on the Land Dept's website. There is an archive of ministerial regulations (in Thai) that you can search for keywords which should reveal the relevant material within a few minutes. I would suggest she prints this out and takes it along to the land officer. If this doesn't work, she can report the incident to the Land Dept head office, the Interior Ministry and finally file a case with the Administrative Court. It is hard to believe that land offices are really unaware of this very major change in the regulations 12 years after the event, except perhaps in the most remote districts where farangs have not yet set foot. I think most of those who express this view are either being xenophobic or hoping for a backhander or both. Land offices are very corrupt places and most of the senior officers are driven by money. It is not unusual for them to take in hundreds of thousands a day in exchange for understating the transfer taxes and even for allowing transfers based on fake documents. A transfer using genuine but slightly out of date documents can usually be arranged for a couple of thousand baht and a similar gratuity is usually appreciated to help smooth things along in any legal transaction involving a foreigner.

In fact the specific case of the Thai married to foreigner whose father wants to transfer land to her as part of an advance inheritance doesn't even require the declaration. This is because it is a family transfer at nil consideration and therefore there is no question of whose funds were used to purchase the land. My wife was involved in a similar family transfer and I went along to sign the declaration but she was told it was not necessary. The transfer taxes between immediate family are also very low.

Edited May 16, 2011 by Arkady