Living wills in Thailand

Written by Greg Berryman. Sources last checked 7 August 2026.

Thailand gives you no way to appoint someone to make medical decisions for you. It does give you one way to make a decision in advance yourself.

What is a living will in Thailand?

Section 12 of the National Health Act B.E. 2550 gives a person the right to make a written declaration refusing treatment that only prolongs the terminal stage of life, or that causes unnecessary suffering. Health personnel who act in accordance with it commit no offence and carry no liability for what follows.

It is a refusal, not an appointment. That distinction runs through everything below.

Can a foreigner make one?

Yes. The right belongs to any person in Thailand. It does not depend on your nationality, your visa class, or how long you have lived here.

Can your family override it?

No, and this is the part most people do not expect.

An advance directive can be made by the patient alone. There is no requirement to consult your family or obtain their agreement, and a doctor does not have to ask their permission before implementing it. Where the patient is unconscious, the only duty owed to the family is to explain the stage of the illness and the process for carrying the directive out.

For an unmarried couple that matters more than it first looks. On almost every other question in Thai law, a partner with no legal status is displaced by a blood relative. On this one narrow question, your own written instruction stands ahead of both of them.

How do you make one?

• In writing.
• Dated and signed by you.
• Two adult witnesses. Not strictly demanded by the Act, but standard practice and worth having.
• Notarisation is generally not required.
• Bilingual, Thai and English. A document the duty doctor cannot read at two in the morning is a document that does not get followed.

Give a copy to whoever would be at the hospital with you, and ask the hospital you would normally use whether it will hold one on file.

What does a living will not do?

• It puts nobody in charge of anything. It appoints no decision-maker, no attorney, no guardian.
• It reaches only the terminal stage of life. It says nothing about the months or years of ordinary medical decisions before that point.
• It does not touch your money, your bank account, your lease or your visa.
• Palliative care continues regardless. Refusing treatment is not refusing comfort.

Where does it fall down in practice?

Two places. "Terminal stage" is not defined precisely, and where doctors are uncertain, they treat. And the document is often not to hand when it is needed, because the emergency happens at three in the morning and the paper is in a drawer at home.

Both are practical problems rather than legal ones, and both are fixable: unambiguous wording, and copies held by the people and the institutions who would actually be in the room.

Is a living will enough on its own?

No. It covers one moment at the end. It does nothing for the far more common situation where you are alive, incapacitated, and nobody can pay your rent or speak to your bank.

That gap is set out on if you lose capacity rather than die. The reason the document you may think covers it does not is on power of attorney in Thailand.