My girl owns a house and land in Phan, Chiang Rai. We will be applying for a visa next year, and as part of the application we've been told that it would be very benificial to the application if she could produce evidence of ownership....However, she's explained that she doesnt have paper work what so ever, for house or land. She said that she built the house on land the familly had for a long time, and she bought the other land in good faith, on a hand shake sort of thing . Apparently that's how things are done in the village.

Anyway I asked her, if we could contact the land dept, to see if we could pay to get a 'chanote' title on it. She said it was not possible. And maybe if we contacted local goverment on it there may be trouble !

Im really at a loss with this. Anyone had a simillar experience? or can recommend a good lawyer to talk to about this?

Thanks....

Sounds like your gf's land may be an illegal encroachment on forest reserve land. The government went through a phase of massively increasing forest reserve land 3-4 decades ago and they included a great deal of land that was already cultivated by villagers. The excuse for not issuing title deeds before that was that a full cadastral survey had not taken place or simply that there was no Land Office yet in that area. After reclassification the "squatters" were not automatically evicted and many are still there or their descendants are. Some may have lesser types of deed that prove ownership but cannot be transferred outside the immediate family and lapse if the holder is no longer cultivating the land.

The topic will be locked as the OP has posted a duplicate thread that has drawn more responses.