Spouses, children, one DTV file.

Who counts as a dependent

Two categories, both narrow.

• SpouseA legally married partner. The relationship is evidenced by a marriage certificate, ideally apostilled or legalised depending on the consulate. Common-law partners, civil partnerships in jurisdictions Thailand does not recognise, and engaged couples do not qualify.
• Children under twentyBiological or legally adopted children under the age of twenty at the date of the application. Evidence is a birth certificate or adoption record, plus the child’s own passport.

What the principal applicant must prove

Everything they would prove on a solo application, plus the relationship. The principal carries the lane (remote work, soft-power activity, or recognised study) and the financial test of 500,000 Thai baht held over three months in a non-blocked account. The dependents do not file their own income evidence or their own bank statements.

This is the rule most couples miss. Two earners do not file as two principals plus two dependents. They file as one principal, with one set of financial evidence, and the rest of the family as dependents on that file.

Why the linked file matters

A linked file presents the consulate with a single, coherent story. The principal qualifies under a clear lane. The relationships are documented. The dependents are listed. Approvals and refusals move together.

Filed in parallel, the consulate sees several separate applications and has to reconstruct the relationships from inference. Two of the four may be approved while the others are queried, leaving the family with mixed statuses and a long correspondence to fix it. We have seen this enough times to treat the linked-file rule as non-negotiable.

The age cut-off at twenty

A child who is nineteen on the date of filing can be included as a dependent. A child who turns twenty before the application is lodged cannot. The cut-off is hard, and the visa for a dependent child remains valid for the full five years even if the child turns twenty during that window. We watch this carefully on families with older teenagers, because filing one month early can be the difference between a unified family file and a child who has to file on their own merits.

Unmarried partners

The DTV does not have a partner category. Couples who are not married either marry before filing, or each partner files independently as their own principal under their own lane. Both routes work, neither is a shortcut. For applicants who plan to marry anyway, doing so before the DTV file removes a meaningful amount of administrative friction down the line.

The short version

One principal. One financial test. One lane. The spouse and the children under twenty travel on the same file, with their relationship to the principal documented end to end. The DTV is a family visa when it is filed as a family file, and a procedural mess when it is not.