Thermal dissociation reactions and mechanism of complexes of rare earth(iii) nitrates with the crown ether benzo-15-crown-5 were investigated by means of TG-DTG, DSC, DTA and IR technique. The results have shown that the dissociation processes of the complexes consist of several steps, one of which is a fast decomposition reaction. The fast decomposition peak temperatures (DSC) of all the complexes of the lanthanides (except Pm and Tm) decrease regularly with increasing atomic number. Moreover, values of the enthalpy change of desolvation, fast and the fourth step of decomposition and the apparent activation energies of fast and the fourth step of decomposition were obtained.