How Private a Marriage in Thailand Is

A marriage in Thailand leaves a government record. Who may read that record afterward is a question about the registration law and the rules the registrar follows. It is not a question about the procedure, so a procedure page does not answer it. This article sets out what that law says, and where it stops.

If you plan to register your marriage in Thailand, our marriage registration service covers the documents, the legalization and the district office for one fixed fee.

Who may inspect a Thai family register

Your marriage is entered in the family register held by the district office. The family register is the government record of marriages, divorces, adoptions and similar family events. Section 9 of the Family Registration Act B.E. 2478 governs who may look at it. B.E. is the Buddhist Era, the Thai calendar, and B.E. 2478 is 1935. An interested person may inspect the register without paying a fee. The same person may obtain a copy certified by the registrar on payment of the fee set in ministerial regulations. The register is not open to the public.

What an interested person means

The term is defined in clause 5 of the Ministry of Interior Regulation on Family Registration B.E. 2541, which is 1998. The definition has three parts. The first part is the parties to the entry, which means the two of you. The second part is a list of people connected to those parties: a spouse, an ascendant, a descendant, a guardian, a curator, a custodian, an adopted child or an adopter. An ascendant is a parent or a grandparent. A descendant is a child or a grandchild. A curator and a custodian are people appointed to act for someone who cannot fully act alone. The third part is anyone the registrar considers to have, or possibly to have, a direct or indirect interest in that entry.

Read the second part before you take comfort from the first. Your parents fall inside it. So do your grandparents and your children. The regulation does not ask whether they approve of the marriage, or whether you want them to know. A close relative who applies at a district office is an interested person by the wording of the rule.

The third part is the registrar's judgment rather than a fixed list. Someone outside the family may be treated as an interested person if the registrar is satisfied that an interest exists. No one can say in advance how a particular registrar will decide.

Public notice and banns

Some countries require banns. Banns are a public announcement of an intended marriage, posted or read aloud so that anyone may object before it takes place. Thai marriage registration has no equivalent step. There is no public notice of your marriage at any stage.

What your own government is told

Consular notification is the duty of one country to tell another country's consulate about certain events involving its nationals. One such duty is set out in article 37 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The article is headed "Information in cases of deaths, guardianship or trusteeship, wrecks and air accidents". Where the Thai authorities have the information, it covers a national's death, the appointment of a guardian or trustee for a minor or another person lacking full capacity, a shipwreck and an aircraft accident. Marriage is not in that article.

Thai disclosure rules stand separately. Section 24 of the Official Information Act B.E. 2540, which is 1997, says that a state agency may not disclose personal information in its control to other agencies or other persons without written consent from the person the information concerns. The section then lists its exceptions. They cover uses inside the agency, statistics and research, archiving, Thai officials acting on law enforcement, danger to life or health, a court or a state agency or another person with a legal power to require the information, and any further case set by royal decree. No exception names a foreign government, and the last one leaves the list open.

The limits of these rules

None of this describes your own country's law, and this article gives no assurance about it. Whether your country asks you to declare your marital status, and what follows from your answer, is a question for a lawyer qualified where you live. No one can exclude every channel either. States cooperate in ways these two texts do not cover, and a document you produce for one purpose can be read by whoever receives it. What can be stated is what the law provides, and here the law is narrow.

A registration without guests

The registration needs a translator and two witnesses at the district office. We bring all three. A couple who wants no guests does not have to bring anyone. We ask for your consent before we film any content on the day.

What Pride Legal Thailand does here

Pride Legal Thailand was created to become the platform for the LGBTQ community around the world looking to get married in Thailand, making the marriage plannable from abroad and completable in a single trip. Part of planning it is knowing what the record will be and who may read it. We answer that question with the law as it stands, and we say where the rules run out.

Pride Legal Thailand arranges the registration of marriages in Thailand for two people of any gender and any nationality. The fee is ฿49,000 (~1,480 USD) for both partners, fixed, with VAT and government fees included; registration outside the Bangkok region costs ฿10,000 (~300 USD) more.

To register your own marriage in Thailand, tell ELSA your nationalities and your dates on the Marriage page: she lists your documents and your timeline, and our lawyer confirms the plan. The steps in order: how two foreigners can get married in Thailand.

Sources

Family Registration Act, B.E. 2478 (1935), Section 9.

Ministry of Interior Regulation on Family Registration, B.E. 2541 (1998), as amended to No. 3, B.E. 2561 (2018), clauses 5, 46 and 47.

Official Information Act, B.E. 2540 (1997), Section 24.

Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, Article 37.