Dying without a will in Thailand: who actually inherits your property

Who actually inherits a Koh Phangan villa, lease or company shares if the owner dies without a Thai will? Not automatically 'the surviving spouse' — Civil and Commercial Code Sections 1629-1635 lay out a strict statutory order of blood-relative heirs, and a spouse's share of the estate depends entirely on which of those relatives is still alive. For a foreign spouse who assumed a will wasn't urgent because 'it all goes to my partner anyway,' this is often the first surprise in Thai succession law.

The six classes, in order

• Section 1629 sets six classes of statutory heir, in strict priority: (1) descendants (children, grandchildren), (2) parents, (3) full-blood siblings, (4) half-blood siblings, (5) grandparents, (6) uncles and aunts.
• A higher class shuts out every class below it. As long as any heir survives — or is represented by their own descendants — in a given class, none of the lower classes inherit anything.
• One exception: under Section 1630, if both descendants and parents survive, they share equally at that level rather than the parents being excluded.

The spouse's share is never automatic

A registered spouse is a statutory heir in their own right under Section 1635, but their share shrinks the further down the family tree the deceased's surviving blood relatives reach:

• Children survive — the spouse takes the same share as one child, dividing the estate equally between the spouse and however many children there are.
• No children, but parents or full-blood siblings survive — the spouse gets one-half; the other half is split among that surviving class.
• Only half-blood siblings, grandparents, or uncles/aunts survive — the spouse gets two-thirds; the remaining third goes to them.
• No statutory heir at all survives — the spouse inherits everything.

Marital property is split first

Before any of the above division happens, property acquired during the marriage (sin somros) is split in half under Sections 1474-1533: the surviving spouse's half was already theirs and never enters the estate. Only the deceased's own half — plus anything that was their separate property — is what gets divided among the statutory heirs.

The Phangan-specific risk: land ends up co-owned with in-laws

Because a foreigner cannot hold Thai land directly, the land under a foreign-owned villa is typically titled to the Thai spouse, with the foreign spouse's interest protected by a registered usufruct or superficies. If the Thai spouse dies without a will and the couple had no children, that land is inherited by the spouse (one-half) and the Thai spouse's own parents or siblings (the other half) — not by the foreign spouse alone. The registered usufruct or superficies keeps binding the land regardless of who inherits it, so the foreign spouse's right to live there and use the building doesn't lapse — but the land itself is now co-owned with in-laws, and the foreign spouse's own inherited share still faces the Section 93 one-year disposal rule that applies to any foreigner who inherits Thai land. Untangling a co-owned inheritance an heir doesn't want held can mean a forced partition sale.

Company shares pass the same way

Shares in a Thai company that holds villa land are personal property and pass through the same six-class system, not the land itself — see A Thai company for property (49/51). Without a will naming an executor, appointing new directors or registering a share transfer at the Department of Business Development needs a shareholders' meeting, which can stall for months if the deceased was the company's sole authorized signatory.

None of this is a reason to panic — it's a reason to write a Thai will. A will covering Thai-situated assets, registered as described in Thailand's will registration rules, lets you set the actual distribution you want and name an executor to manage disposal deadlines, instead of leaving the outcome to a statutory formula and a shareholders' meeting nobody called.