Power of attorney in Thailand
Not sure where to start? Start here
Written by Greg Berryman. Sources last checked 8 August 2026.
A power of attorney in Thailand covers one job you have identified, and it ends when you lose capacity.
If this is happening now and the person is in hospital, start with what to do when someone is hospitalised in Thailand.
The chart below works from what you already hold.
Every box with an underlined heading opens the page that explains it. Whichever branch you follow, no document you sign in advance produces authority over your money, your treatment or your daily obligations.
What is a power of attorney in Thailand?
Thai law treats it as agency. You appoint someone to do one specific thing in your name, within limits you set, on a job you have identified. That sits in the Civil and Commercial Code at sections 797 to 832.
Inside that scope it works fine. Outside it, it gives no authority at all.
When does a Thai power of attorney end?
It ends if either of you dies, loses capacity or goes bankrupt. That is section 826.
So a power of attorney you signed while you were well stops working at the exact moment a stroke, a bad accident or a dementia diagnosis makes it necessary.
Which documents survive incapacity in Thailand?
| Document | What it covers | Does it survive incapacity? |
|---|---|---|
| Thai power of attorney | A specific job you have identified | No, it ends |
| Foreign lasting or enduring power of attorney | Whatever your home country allows | Untested in Thailand |
| Medical power of attorney sold by Thai law firms | Medical consent, on its own terms | Unclear, and unresolved |
| Section 12 living will | Refusing treatment that only prolongs the end of life | Yes, within that narrow scope |
| Court guardianship or curatorship | Property, money, where you live, medical decisions | Only exists after the fact |
The last row is the only one that gives anybody broad authority, and it is the one you cannot set up in advance. Everything you can sign while you are well is in the rows above it, and not one of them is a clear yes.
Is there a durable power of attorney in Thailand?
No.
Every country this site covers has a document that keeps working after you lose capacity. A lasting power of attorney in England and Wales, an enduring power of attorney in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, a durable power of attorney in the United States, a power of attorney for property or personal care in the Canadian provinces. Different names, same idea. You appoint someone while you can still make decisions, and they carry on when you cannot.
Thailand has nothing equivalent, whatever your nationality and however long you have lived here.
One made in your home country is not a safe substitute either. Nobody has confirmed what weight, if any, a foreign one carries here. The advice to hold one is given to expatriates routinely, and it is sound at home.
What replaces a power of attorney if you lose capacity?
A court process, run by somebody else, after it has already happened.
If a person can no longer manage their own affairs, a court can declare them incompetent and appoint a guardian, section 28, or put them under a curator, section 32. It takes two applications and two hearings, and the reported timings start at three months. What the court looks at, who may apply, and what a guardian can then do is on guardianship and curatorship in Thailand.
Nothing you sign in advance produces that outcome. You cannot name your own guardian the way you would name an attorney at home. Somebody has to apply, and the court picks who gets appointed based on what it thinks is best for you.
What happens to the bank account and the bills in the meantime is on if you lose capacity rather than die.
Do the medical powers of attorney sold by Thai law firms work?
Nobody has answered that yet.
Thai law firms have sold lawyer-drafted bilingual medical powers of attorney for well over a decade. Either those documents work differently from ordinary agency, or they carry less weight than the name suggests. Neither possibility has been established.
Until it is answered: if you hold one, keep it. Do not assume it is enough, and do not build a plan around it on its own. If you are considering buying one, ask the firm selling it what happens to it under section 826, and get the answer in writing.
What can you arrange instead?
- A living will. Narrow, but you can make it on your own and your family cannot overrule it. See living wills in Thailand.
- Marriage, if it is open to you and something you want. It puts a spouse at the top of the list of people who can apply to the court, and makes them next of kin for medical decisions.
- A Thai will, properly drafted. It does nothing while you are alive, but it takes one problem off the pile, and for a Canadian or an American it is also the document their embassy will act on after death. See what a Thai will does and does not cover.
- Telling people in advance. A partner who knows to expect a three-month court process behaves very differently from one who finds out at a hospital desk.
What is in the guide?
The pages on this site are free and stay free.
This page covers one document and the moment it stops working. What is left is preparation, so that whoever ends up in front of a court, a hospital or a bank on your behalf is not starting from nothing. Affairs In Order Thailand: the guide is that preparation. It contains:
- An asset and document inventory. What exists and where it is: accounts, policies, property, contracts, the people to call, and where the keys and passwords are held rather than what they are.
- The next of kin authorisation letter, in the wording the British government publishes, with notes on who counts as next of kin and what each of the other five governments requires instead.
- Fourteen pages of nationality modules for British, American, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and Irish citizens. The release letter, post-mortems, registering the death at home, and what your embassy will not do, with two comparison tables at the front.
Word and PDF, $49. Buy it once and you are sent the corrected version whenever Thai procedure or embassy practice changes.
Sources
- Thai Civil and Commercial Code, sections 797 to 832 on agency, including section 826 on the events that end an agency, and sections 28 to 36 on incompetence, guardianship, quasi-incompetence and curatorship.
- National Health Act, B.E. 2550 (2007), section 12, for the living will row in the table above. Published in the Government Gazette, Volume 124, Part 16a, 19 March 2550. English translation published by the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University.
- That each of the six countries covered by this site has an instrument surviving incapacity is a statement about those countries' own law, not about Thai law, and the names given are the common ones rather than a complete list. Provincial and state law differs within Canada, Australia and the United States.
- The existence of commercially sold bilingual medical powers of attorney is taken from Thai law firms' own published product pages, read on 6 August 2026. Whether such a document has legal effect in Thailand is an open question and is not settled on this page.
- Code sections are cited from published English translations. No official English text of Thai legislation exists. Only the Thai text as published in the Royal Gazette has legal force. Thai legal review of these sections is under way. Section numbers are given so the provisions can be checked directly. See about this site.