Legalisation of Thai Marriage Certificate for Spanish Residence

[mark604]

Hi

I am a British National residing in Spain with my Thai wife who is currently on a 3 month Schengen Visa. We are now trying to apply for Spanish residence. We have fullfilled all the criteria required by the Spanish Police including health insurance, financial means etc but they are insisting on seeing a Spanish translation of our Thai Marriage Certificate legalised by the Spanish Embassy in Bangkok.

Having sent our Marriage Certificate to my sister-in-law in Bangkok for this purpose she is finding very difficult to get the correct legalisation of the Marriage Certificate by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Thai Ministry had stamped the certificate for her but the Spanish Embassy have said that this is not good enough and the Signature of the Official that signed the Certificate needs to be legalised. Having refered back to the Thai Ministry they have informed us that we need to go the District Office where we were married and get the Officials signature so they can legalise the certificate correctly. Having then visited the District Office they asked for a letter from the Spanish Embassy! I am sure the Spanish Embassy will not provide any letter for them as they were not interested in giving any advice on how we get the Thai Ministry to legalise the Marriage Certificate as they are obviously nothing to do with Thai authorities.

Does anyone have any advice on how to correctly legalise the Thai marriage certificate and the process we need to follow?

Many thanks.

[PatWhittaker]

Hi,

Are you still looking for an answer?

When I was in Spain, I got my sister in law to do all this paperwork for me.... a bit of a pain really...

I had to get authorization form from thai embassy in Madrid stating that I want my sister to legalize document on my behalf.

Once that was done, I faxed it to my sister.

My sister did the rest....If your already have copies of marriage certificate and marriage registration paper, get them translated by Chula centre. Docs have to be notorized by Legaluzation dept in Changwattana I believe.

Then call the Spanish Embassy in Thailand asking for a number of a person who can manage to legalize the docs for you to meet Spanish standard. They told us when we called enquiring information.

They will guide you through the rest if the process.

Ps...If you have questions, just ask. I'm on tablet, with my 2 yrs old...I'm sure I dont give clear instructions

Sent from my GT-N5100 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[PatWhittaker]

Just add that legalisation by mfa is not enough for Spanish Embassy cuz they need a signature legalisation in which our thai mfa just legalize docs only, not an individual signature.

Sent from my GT-N5100 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[mark604]

Hi

Thanks for the reply. We managed to get the legalistaion done in the end but it was a bit tricky explaining to the Thai MFA how to do the signature legalisation, took a few trips back and forth from the MFA to the Marriage Office. Took about a week to sort out and get translated and we had the cert sent back to us in Spain by DHL just in time. Applied for the residency last Tuesday, I got mine the same day and we are just waiting for my wife's to arrive.