Bring your spouse and children to Thailand on your DTV

What the DTV Dependent Visa Is

The Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) is built around a single primary applicant, the person who qualifies through remote work, soft-power activities like Muay Thai or Thai cooking, or medical treatment. Once that person has an approved DTV, they can bring their immediate family to Thailand on a dependent track called DTV Dependent. This page is for the family side of that arrangement, your legal spouse and your children under 20.

If you are the primary DTV applicant and you only need help with your own visa, see our DTV visa service. This service handles everything that comes after your DTV is approved, when it is time to file the spouse and children with as little drama as possible.

Who Qualifies As A Dependent

The dependent category is narrow and very literal. Thai consulates accept exactly two types of family member.

1. Your Legal Spouse

This means a marriage that is registered with a competent civil authority in some country and provable on paper. A wedding ceremony, religious blessing, long engagement or shared address is not enough. If a government did not issue you a marriage certificate, you do not have a legal spouse for DTV purposes.

Since 22 January 2025 Thailand recognises same-sex marriage under its Marriage Equality Act, and the Thai legal framework now treats same-sex spouses on the same footing as opposite-sex spouses across visa, inheritance and family matters. In practice this should mean a legally registered same-sex marriage qualifies as a DTV dependent relationship, but consular practice is still settling, especially when the marriage was registered in a country that does not recognise same-sex unions.

2. Your Children Under 20

Children qualify if they are under 20 years old and unmarried. The age cut-off is the day they turn 20, not 18 and not 21. A child who is 19 years and 11 months old at the time of application is still eligible. A child who has just turned 20 is not, and there is no discretion to bend that.

Adopted children qualify with proper adoption paperwork. Stepchildren and children from a previous relationship can qualify if you are the legal parent on the birth certificate or adoption order. A child who is married is treated as having their own household and is no longer your dependent for DTV purposes, even if they are under 20.

Who Does Not Qualify

The DTV dependent category does not stretch to cover:

• Unmarried partners, fiancés or long-term boyfriends and girlfriends, even with shared children.
• Common-law spouses where your country recognises the status without a registered marriage.
• Parents, grandparents or in-laws of the principal applicant.
• Adult children aged 20 or older, even if they live with you and you support them financially.
• Siblings, nieces, nephews and cousins.

If your real situation falls into one of these, the answer is usually a different visa, not a creative DTV dependent application.

Documents You Need For Each Dependent

Every dependent applies as a separate person with their own application form, photo, passport and document set. There is no single "family file" that covers everyone, even if you submit them all on the same day.

Always Required

• Passport with at least 6 months validity from the intended travel date and at least one blank visa page.
• Recent passport-style photograph taken within the last 6 months that meets your consulate's background and size rules.
• Completed DTV application form, normally through the Thai e-Visa portal at thaievisa.go.th.
• Copy of the principal DTV holder's passport bio page and approved DTV, so the consular officer can match the dependent file to a real, approved primary visa.
• Proof of relationship to the principal, which is the document type that varies by family member and is described below.

For Your Spouse

You need a marriage certificate that is legalised for use in Thailand. Thailand is not a member of the Hague Apostille Convention, so a U.S. or U.K. style apostille is not enough on its own. The standard route is:

1. Notarise or certify the marriage certificate in the country that issued it.
2. Authenticate it through that country's foreign affairs department or equivalent.
3. Have it legalised by the Royal Thai Embassy or Consulate in that country.
4. If the original document is not in English or Thai, add a certified translation that is also legalised.

Some consulates will accept the marriage certificate without full Thai legalisation if the document is recent, in English and clearly issued by a recognised authority, but this is at the officer's discretion. Treat full legalisation as the safe default and only skip steps if your consulate confirms in writing that they accept less.

For Your Children

Each child needs a birth certificate showing both legal parents, or an adoption order if applicable. The same legalisation logic applies as for the marriage certificate. If only one parent is travelling with the child, some consulates also ask for a notarised consent letter from the other parent, especially in cases of divorce or separation. Bring it. It is cheaper to have it and not need it than to be turned away at submission.

Common Document Problems

• Marriage certificates from countries that have changed names since the wedding (for example, after divorce and re-marriage) where the names on certificate, passport and DTV principal's passport do not match cleanly.
• Birth certificates that list a parent under a maiden name without any explanatory document.
• Translations done by an unqualified translator and not stamped by a body the consulate recognises.
• Documents that have been laminated, which most consulates treat as tampered.

Our team checks all of this before you submit, because none of it is fixable in the queue at the embassy.

The 500,000 THB Question For Dependents

Almost every family asks the same thing first. Does each dependent need 500,000 THB, or does the principal's money cover everyone? The honest answer is that this depends on the consulate, and we have to be careful not to promise you something we cannot guarantee.

The Strict Reading Of The Rule

The official DTV financial requirement is 500,000 THB per applicant. Read literally, that means the principal shows 500,000 THB, the spouse shows 500,000 THB, and each child under 20 shows 500,000 THB. A family of four would need to demonstrate 2,000,000 THB in total. Some consulates apply this strictly and want to see clear evidence of funds for each dependent.

What We See In Practice

In real applications the picture is more flexible at many consulates. We commonly see:

• The principal applicant showing the full family amount in their own account, with a covering letter explaining the funds support the listed dependents.
• Spouses applying with a joint bank account that clearly shows both names and a balance equal to or above the combined requirement.
• Sponsorship letters from the principal taking financial responsibility for minor children, paired with the principal's own bank evidence.
• Reduced flexibility for older teenage dependents, who are sometimes asked to show their own funds even when younger siblings are not.

This flexibility is not promised in writing on every embassy site, and it is not the same at every consulate. What works at Ho Chi Minh City may not work at Taipei. We treat the strict reading as the default, then identify which consulates have a recent pattern of accepting combined family funds for your specific situation, and route your file accordingly.

What This Means For Your Plan

If you can show 500,000 THB cleanly per family member, do that. It removes the argument entirely. If you cannot, do not guess. Bring us the real numbers and we will tell you which consulate fits your evidence and how to structure the bank statements, sponsorship letters and supporting documents so the family file reads as a single, supportable case.

Where And How Dependents Apply

Dependents must apply from outside Thailand, just like the principal. There is no DTV dependent path that starts at a Thai immigration office. The two routes you actually have are:

1. Online via the Thai e-Visa portal at thaievisa.go.th, which is now used by Royal Thai consulates worldwide. Most modern DTV files are submitted this way.
2. In person or by post at a Royal Thai Embassy or Consulate abroad, in the small number of cases where the e-Visa system does not cover the applicant's nationality or residence.

Each dependent submits their own application and pays the consulate's DTV fee, which is normally 10,000 THB per applicant. A family of four therefore pays four government fees on top of any service costs. Some consulates collect this in local currency and the converted amount can vary.

You can usually submit the principal and the dependents in parallel at the same consulate, so the family travels together once approvals come back. Where applicants are spread across countries (for example a spouse and child still living in your home country while you are already on the road), each can apply at the consulate that fits their location, as long as each file references the same approved principal DTV.

How Long Dependents Can Stay

A DTV Dependent is structured the same way as the principal DTV. It is a multiple-entry visa valid for 5 years, with up to 180 days of permitted stay per entry. Dependents can extend their permitted stay once per entry inside Thailand, for an additional period of up to 180 days, by paying the standard extension fee at a Thai immigration office. The fee is typically 1,900 THB. Verify the current local figure before you file.

After that combined stay, the dependent must leave Thailand and re-enter to receive a new 180-day stamp. As long as the 5-year visa validity has not expired and the principal's visa is still active, this re-entry pattern can repeat throughout the life of the visa.

The 180-day periods are tracked per person, not per family, so a spouse and a child can be on slightly different stamp cycles if they entered Thailand on different dates. Our team helps families align entries so 90-day reports and extensions do not become a calendar nightmare.

What Happens If The Principal's DTV Is Cancelled

The DTV Dependent visa exists because of the principal's status, so it is treated as connected to that status. If the principal's DTV is cancelled, expires without renewal, or is revoked due to a violation, dependents should expect their own status to be reviewed and, in most realistic scenarios, to lose the legal basis to remain as DTV dependents. Each dependent's permission to stay would then run only until the end of their currently stamped 180-day period, after which they would need to leave Thailand or move onto a different visa category.

The exact mechanics of how Thai immigration handles dependents after a cancelled principal visa are not spelled out in detail on consular websites, and outcomes can vary case by case. If this happens to your family, do not wait for it to resolve itself.

Common Reasons Dependent Applications Get Rejected

• Marriage certificate not properly legalised. An apostille alone or a notarised copy without consular legalisation is the most common rejection reason for spouses.
• Names that do not match across documents. Marriage certificate in maiden name, passport in married name, no supporting deed poll or name-change document. The officer cannot tell who you are.
• Children's birth certificates that do not show the principal as a parent, with no adoption order or supporting custody paperwork to explain the gap.
• Age dispute on a child. A passport listing a date of birth that pushes the child over 20, or a child whose date of birth is recorded inconsistently between birth certificate and passport.
• Submitting the dependent before the principal's DTV is approved, so there is no approved principal visa to reference.
• Insufficient funds for the family, especially when the principal's account is the only evidence and the consulate applies the strict 500,000 THB per person reading.
• Applying from inside Thailand, which is not allowed for DTV dependents under any consulate's current process.
• Unrecognised relationship, including unregistered partnerships, religious marriages without civil registration, and dependents outside the spouse-or-child-under-20 categories.