A marriage registered in Thailand ends under Thai rules, and those rules rarely match what either spouse expected.

The administrative route is fast because it is purely consensual. Both spouses appear at a district office with passports or identity cards, the marriage registration and two witnesses, and register the dissolution together with an agreement on property, on which parent holds parental power, and on maintenance. It is the cheapest and quietest option, and its weakness is exactly its strength: whatever the agreement says becomes the settlement, so an agreement drafted in a hurry to end an argument tends to be litigated later. We draft the settlement before either party goes anywhere near the district office.

The contested route runs through the Family and Juvenile Court on statutory grounds — desertion, serious misconduct, harm to body or mind, three years of separation, imprisonment and others. The court hears evidence, and it decides the ancillary questions the spouses could not settle. Foreign spouses often underestimate how much of the outcome depends on documentary discipline: transfer records, remittance histories, chat logs, school records and, in property disputes, the paper trail showing where the purchase money came from.

There is also a recognition question that catches people who divorced abroad. A foreign divorce judgment does not automatically appear in the Thai registration record, and until the record reflects reality, a party may still be treated as married for registration purposes in Thailand. Where a spouse intends to remarry here or deal with Thai property, we address the recognition step early rather than after a registrar refuses.

Thai law separates personal property from marital property. What each spouse brought into the marriage, and what came to them by inheritance or personal gift, remains theirs; what was earned or acquired during the marriage is in principle shared and divided equally on dissolution. The difficulty is proof. Money that arrived from abroad, went through a spouse's account and was spent on a house registered in a family member's name produces a claim that needs bank records, not recollection.

A prenuptial agreement is enforceable in Thailand only when it is recorded with the marriage registration at the time of marriage, in the presence of witnesses. A document signed after the wedding, or signed abroad and never recorded here, does not carry the same effect. Couples planning to marry in Thailand who want to depart from the default sharing rules must therefore prepare the agreement before the registration date, not afterwards.

Maintenance is decided by need and capacity rather than by formula. Child support looks at the child's actual costs — schooling, health, housing — and at each parent's real income, and it can be revisited when circumstances change. Spousal maintenance is narrower and depends on the grounds and conduct found by the court. Where a paying parent lives abroad, we build the order so that it can be enforced against something: a Thai account, rental income, or an asset that cannot be moved.

Parental power is the concept that matters, not the loose word custody. For a child born to married parents, both hold it. For a child born outside marriage, the mother holds it alone, and the father acquires it by legitimation with the mother's and child's consent at a district office, or by court order, or by a later marriage. Until then, a father's name on a birth certificate does not let him consent to a passport application or to relocation.

Relocation disputes are the most time-sensitive matters we see. Taking a child out of Thailand without the consent of the parent who holds parental power creates both an immigration problem and a civil one, and the Thai courts treat unilateral removal as a serious factor when they later decide arrangements. Thailand is a party to the Hague Convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction, so a wrongful removal can trigger a return process rather than a fresh custody hearing in the new country.

Practical arrangements survive better than principled ones. Orders and agreements that name school terms, handover locations, travel consent mechanics and a method for changing the schedule are the ones that stop producing new disputes. We also record how the child's documents are held, because a passport in one parent's drawer is a recurring cause of missed travel and new applications.

When a person dies owning immovable property or bank deposits in Thailand, the heirs cannot simply present a death certificate and sign a transfer. The Civil and Commercial Code sets out classes of statutory heirs and the spouse's share alongside them, and a Thai court appoints an estate administrator who then deals with the Land Office and the banks. Even an uncontested estate needs that appointment, and the application requires proof of the family relationships in a form a Thai court accepts, which for foreign families usually means legalised and translated civil records.

A will helps, but only if it is valid in form. Thai law recognises several forms, including a will made in writing with witnesses and one made before a district officer. A foreign will can govern Thai assets, though in practice it must be proved and translated, and any doubt about capacity, revocation or a later document turns an administrative filing into a contested case. Where a client holds assets in more than one country, we align the Thai document with the foreign one so that neither revokes the other by accident.

Two structural questions deserve attention while the owner is alive. First, foreign heirs of land cannot generally hold that land indefinitely and may face a disposal requirement, so the estate plan should decide what is meant to happen rather than leaving heirs with an asset they cannot keep. Second, condominium ownership, leasehold rights, company shares and usufructs each pass differently, and a plan that treats them as one pool produces surprises for the people left behind.