A little bitter there Oddball? Not sure if it was my wife you were suggesting in your little rant or the Ops. USUFRUCTs are a fact - erm, yes really. They are little known about, mostly becuase the Thai goverment doesn't want too much interest to be shown. They are used quite a lot in business and to protect Thai wives from their Thai husbands, who could abandon them with nothing in the past. This law will not be repealed any time soon as too many businesses rely on them. It has SFA to do with immigration or land ownership laws as at no point are you a land ower; you cn not use it as an asset of your own etc and is irrelevent to immigration. It is a legal framework that is used in most of the world to protect long term leasees. The usual way is that tghe land is owned by a ligitimate land owner - be it Government, Tghai citizen or company and the USUFRUCT is given (usually sold) to thwe occupier along with a lease agreement. This isn't a circumvention of one law against another, it was set up for the sole reason of protecting the interests of land users (most commonly farmers) from land owners who could benefit from land improvements or declare themselves owner of the farm's produce without it. As the USERFRUCTEE you are not the owner, so you are within the law in its entirity. They are not new, and certainly not brought in to service us Farrangs - they do exist are embedded in Thai law and open to use by us.

Many people, as you suggest, are stung by unscupulous partners of one sort or another. The standard 'beer-crying-fare' is he Farrang meet little Lek at his hotel, they fall for eachother (ignoring a forty year age gap) and farrang buys new buffalo for Lek's mum, new pick-up for dad and a town house for the two of them to love on in. Papers signed, Lek's four uncles turn up and Farrang is in the bar crying into his Beer Chang..... This will happen no matter what. People are blind and gullable, fact. So many of these people check their brains in at BKK airport and fall for the same thing, sure.

This is kinda the point though. If mr Farrang above had a USUFRUCT, then LEGALLY Lek could not have thrown him out. Sure, she'd still own the land, but she wouldn't get it until he was dead - and if he used his senses and put a third party on the USUFRUCT (like his young son from his first failed marriage back in Farrangland), then the kid would still hold it until he died. Kind of kills the trick if they can't sell the land for 60 years or so - and Mr Farrang is well past caring if he's dead already.

Having said all that - I do agree that there is more than the legalities here. Being in a tiny vilage where little Lek has turned them against you, isn't very nice. Of course, you could bugger off knowing that she can't sell the land anyway, so can't realise the benefit either. It is unlikely though that a little village would benefit from USUFRUCT as they require deedmms and legal land registration, many villages do not have deeded lands or legal registration, only local registration (on whic a USUFRUCT would be impossible without the extra cost of getting the land measured and deeded by the goverment). USUFRUCTs really come into their own if the land is in a town or city - also much harder for Lek to turn everyone against you in the middle of Bangkok.

The golden rule always applies - "Only spend what you can afford to walk away from" - USUFRUCTs just give you the ability to stop her ripping you off, you may never get the cash back either. So, be careful where you decide to live - I certainly wouldn't want to live close to her family anyway - I know my wife doesn't either, but I've got a good'n - like most of us (we're just not as vocal as the 'beer-cryers')

I wouldn't say Thais are the biggest liars in the world either, but I guess that was meant to be inflamatory.

...and just for your info...my wife owns a fair bit of land, comes from a military family, had been married to me for a decade and is a terrible liar (in that she might aswel hold up a plaque saying "I'm fibbing now!"), so not too many hits there then