Debt recovery in Thailand: guides for creditors
The series in the order a creditor usually needs it: how recovery works, how long you have, the bankruptcy route and personal guarantees.
Read in order
- 01
Debt recovery in Thailand for foreign creditors
How a foreign creditor recovers a debt from a Thai company: time limits, default interest, demand letters, suing from abroad, bankruptcy and arbitration.
- 02
Unpaid invoices: two years or five
Why a supplier's claim against a Thai company is often five years, not two: section 193/34(1), section 193/33(5) and the Supreme Court cases that apply them.
- 03
Petitioning a Thai company into bankruptcy
Petitioning a Thai company into bankruptcy: the two-million-baht threshold, two demands to prove insolvency, and two months to prove the debt.
- 04
Personal guarantees from Thai company directors
What a creditor can rely on when a Thai company's director guarantees its debt: form, the 2015 ban on joint-debtor terms, and the guarantor's defences.
- 05
Bounced cheques in Thailand
A bounced cheque from a Thai customer: the one-year civil claim, the three-month criminal complaint under the Cheque Act, and cheques it does not cover.
Where the work is done
- Enforcement and asset recovery
- Civil and commercial litigation
- Arbitration
- Bankruptcy and rehabilitation
More on debts and guarantees
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Civil and commercial litigation
The creditor missed the sixty days: how far is the guarantor freed
The second paragraph of section 686 frees a guarantor from interest and accessories arising after sixty days, but judgment 220/2562 holds the principal obligation survives.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong · 6 August 2026 -
Civil and commercial litigation
One co-guarantor keeps paying, and time runs on for the others
Section 692 carries an interruption from debtor to guarantor, but not back the other way and not across between co-guarantors, as judgment 6403/2561 shows.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong · 7 August 2026 -
Civil and commercial litigation
Acknowledging a debt after it has expired leaves the creditor two years
The same acknowledgment yields ten years or two, depending only on whether it was signed before or after the claim expired: judgments 4507/2547 and 12264/2555.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong · 7 August 2026 -
Civil and commercial litigation
Interest above fifteen per cent is not reduced to fifteen, it is void
Section 654 says the rate comes down to fifteen per cent, but judgment 1452/2511 holds the interest wholly void, not merely the excess, while the principal stands.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong · 7 August 2026 -
Civil and commercial litigation
One chat, two transfers, only one recovered
In judgment 3622/2568 two transfers in the same chat went opposite ways: a thank-you sticker counted as a signature but did not make the message mean a loan.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong · 6 August 2026 -
Enforcement and asset recovery
The thirty per cent nobody can find in the statute
Section 302 of the Civil Procedure Code protects an amount, not a percentage: government pay is wholly exempt, private pay up to twenty thousand baht a month.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong · 6 August 2026
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