You will be able to explain the documents that protect you if you lose mental capacity or near the end of life.
A will only works after you die. The harder situation for many families comes earlier: a stroke, a fall that causes a head injury, or dementia that arrives slowly over years. You are alive, your bills keep coming and decisions about your care need making, but you can no longer make them yourself. Who makes them then?
Many people assume their spouse or children can step in. In Singapore nobody gets that authority automatically, however close they are. This lesson covers the documents that settle the question in advance. It is education, and a lawyer or doctor can advise on your own situation.
A Lasting Power of Attorney, or LPA, is a legal document under the Mental Capacity Act in which you appoint one or more people, called donees, to make decisions on your behalf if you lose mental capacity. Until that happens, it has no effect and you remain in full control. While you still have capacity, you can revoke it.
An LPA covers two areas, and you can grant either or both. Personal welfare covers decisions such as where you live, your daily care and who you see. Property and affairs covers your money: paying bills, managing bank accounts and investments, and dealing with property. You can choose different donees for each, and name a replacement donee in case your first choice can't act. Where you name more than one donee for an area, you choose whether they must act together on every decision or can act separately.
Most people use the standard form, which works by ticking options and setting limits. People with complicated affairs, such as a business, can instead have a lawyer draft a form with custom terms. Before the form is submitted, a certificate issuer, such as an accredited doctor or a practising lawyer, must confirm that you understand the LPA and aren't being pressured into making it. Then it is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, whose website explains the forms, the list of certificate issuers, the steps and the current fees.
If you lose capacity without an LPA, nobody has automatic authority over your money or welfare. Your bank won't take instructions from your daughter just because she is your daughter. To act for you, a family member has to apply to the Family Justice Courts to be appointed a deputy under the Mental Capacity Act.
That application takes time, money and medical reports, and while it is pending your accounts may be hard to use. The court decides who becomes deputy and what they can do, and it may not be the person you would have chosen. A partner you never married, like Jasmine's partner Leong, may struggle to be appointed at all if your relatives disagree.
For someone with a retirement plan like the one in modules 3 to 5, this matters a great deal. Someone has to carry out the withdrawals, refill the buckets and follow the written rules. If you lose capacity without an LPA, the plan stops until a court says otherwise. With one, your donee can carry on, and the rules you wrote in lesson 4.4, Write your withdrawal and refill rules, tell them how.
An LPA covers decisions about your welfare and money. Two other tools record your wishes about medical treatment.
An Advance Medical Directive, or AMD, is a legal document under the Advance Medical Directive Act. In it, you state that if you become terminally ill and unconscious, and extraordinary life-sustaining treatment would only prolong the process of dying, you don't want that treatment. It is signed before witnesses, one of whom must be a doctor, and registered with the Registrar of Advance Medical Directives. The Ministry of Health's website explains the form and the process. An AMD is narrow by design. It covers one specific situation and nothing else.
Advance Care Planning is broader and less formal. It is a set of conversations, often guided by a trained facilitator, in which you think through what matters to you, the treatment you would and wouldn't want in different situations, where you would prefer to be cared for, and who should speak for you. The result is recorded in a care plan that doctors and your family can refer to. It isn't legally binding in the way an AMD is, but it gives the people around you something specific to follow. The Agency for Integrated Care explains how to start, and hospitals and polyclinics offer facilitated sessions.
The three fit together. The LPA names who decides. The AMD settles one narrow medical question in law. Advance Care Planning tells the people deciding what you would want across the many situations neither document covers.
Jasmine decided on an LPA covering both areas. For property and affairs she named Megan as her donee and Ryan as replacement, because Megan lives nearby, is organised and already knows the plan. For personal welfare she named both Megan and Leong, able to act separately, with Ryan as replacement. Naming Leong gives him a legal voice in her care that he would otherwise lack.
She has not made an AMD. She has booked an Advance Care Planning session at her polyclinic and plans to bring Megan, so the person most likely to speak for her hears it first-hand.
She also gave Megan a copy of her one-page withdrawal rules and told her where her drawdown map is saved. A donee who has a plan to follow makes fewer anxious guesses.
Before the activity, think about who you would trust with your money and who with your care, whether they are the same person, and who would step in if your first choice couldn't.
Write who you would name as LPA donees and whether you have recorded medical wishes.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).