Legal help for foreigners in Thailand.

Thailand is a codified civil law jurisdiction. If you have come from the UK, the United States, Australia or Canada, that one difference explains most of the expensive mistakes foreigners make here. There is no binding case-law precedent to argue from, the written Thai-language record carries decisive weight, and a great deal is settled at the police or administrative stage long before anything resembles a court hearing. Three consequences run through every situation below. The Thai written record is what exists. Statements, agreements and filings are made in Thai, and what is recorded in Thai is what counts — not the careful explanation you gave in English, and not what you understood yourself to be agreeing to. That is why giving a police statement is not a conversation, and why signing a property or company document you cannot read is not a formality. Some clocks run whether or not you know it. Overstay, recovering money after a fraud, bail, and re-entry decisions are all time-sensitive, and in several of them your position changes materially the moment you are stopped rather than coming forward yourself. Others punish haste instead: in property, company structure, divorce and custody, the damage is usually done by a signature given before the structure underneath it was checked. Your immigration status is entangled with all of it. The outcome of a criminal, family or commercial matter can change your right to remain in Thailand. Treating the two as separate problems is how one solvable matter quietly becomes two. If you need help now, these are the situations where hours matter — being asked to give a police statement, arrest or criminal charges and bail, recovering money after a scam, a road traffic accident, an overstay you have just discovered, and any question of deportation or a re-entry ban. These reward preparation over speed — buying property and the due diligence that protects it, setting up a company and the nominee arrangements that quietly undermine one, divorce as a foreign national, and child custody where removal from the country is a risk. Each situation below is written for foreigners, checked against official Thai sources, and handled by qualified specialists who practise in this jurisdiction.