Will writing services in Singapore range from free DIY templates to online platforms around S$99 and lawyers charging S$200 to S$1,500 for a simple to standard will. A will tells the court how to split your money, property and belongings after you die. But a will is one document in a larger estate planning set. It does not touch your CPF savings, it cannot help while you are still alive but mentally incapacitated, and it does nothing for jointly held assets. This guide covers what each part of an estate plan costs in 2026, who needs which document, and the cheap mistakes that send your money to the wrong people.
A will is a written document that says how your estate is distributed after death. Your estate is everything you own in your sole name: bank balances, shares, your share of a property, cars, jewellery, and anything else with your name on it. A will also names an executor (the person who handles the paperwork and distribution) and, if you have young children, a guardian.
Under Singapore's Wills Act, a valid will has to clear a short checklist. You must be at least 21 years old. The will must be in writing. You sign it, and two or more witnesses watch you sign and then sign themselves in your presence. The two witnesses cannot be beneficiaries of the will, and cannot be the spouse of a beneficiary, or the gift to that person fails. Get the witnessing wrong and the whole document can be challenged.
A will writing service is anyone who drafts that document for you for a fee. The market splits into three groups: online self-service platforms, non-lawyer will writers, and law firms. The output is the same legal document. What differs is how much hand-holding, customisation and legal advice you get, and what happens if something goes wrong later.
Price tracks complexity, not prestige. A clean estate (one property, a couple of bank accounts, a few named beneficiaries) is cheap to put on paper. Overseas assets, a business, a trust for young children or a blended family pushes you toward a lawyer and a higher fee.
Do not assume a non-lawyer will writer is automatically cheaper than a law firm. The legal market here is competitive, and several firms quote fixed fees for a simple will that land in the same range as the online and non-lawyer services. Always ask whether the quote is nett and what counts as a 'simple' will before you commit.
| Option | Typical cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| DIY (write it yourself) | Free to ~S$50 for a template | Very simple estate, comfortable with the formalities |
| Online will platform | From ~S$99 | Straightforward wishes, want a guided form |
| Non-lawyer will writing service | ~S$200 to S$800 | Some guidance, standard assets |
| Lawyer, simple will | ~S$200 to S$500 | Simple estate, want legal accountability |
| Lawyer, standard will | ~S$500 to S$1,500 | Property plus investments, a few beneficiaries |
| Lawyer, complex will | ~S$2,000 and up | Overseas assets, business, trusts, blended family |
Price is the first thing people compare, and the worst thing to decide on alone. The three routes produce the same legal document, but they differ on how much advice you get, who is accountable if the will turns out to be flawed, and what backup you have years later when your family actually needs the thing. Match the route to how messy your estate is, not to the lowest quote.
An online platform suits a clean estate and someone comfortable reading instructions. A non-lawyer will writer adds a human to check the form. A lawyer is the only route that comes with professional indemnity, advice tailored to your situation, and someone who can defend the will if it is challenged. The more your estate involves property, a business, overseas assets or a blended family, the more that accountability is worth paying for.
| Factor | Online platform | Non-lawyer will writer | Lawyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | From ~S$99 | ~S$200 to S$800 | ~S$200 to S$1,500+ |
| Tailored legal advice | No, guided form only | Limited | Yes |
| Handles complex assets | Weak | Some | Strong |
| Professional indemnity if it goes wrong | No | Usually no | Yes |
| Can defend a challenged will | No | No | Yes |
| Storage or custody offered | Sometimes | Often, for a fee | Often, for a fee |
If you die without a valid will, you die 'intestate', and the Intestate Succession Act decides who gets what. You do not get a say, and the split is rigid. This Act applies to non-Muslims; Muslim estates in Singapore are distributed under the Administration of Muslim Law Act and the faraid (Syariah inheritance) rules instead.
The fixed shares surprise people. A common assumption is that a surviving spouse inherits everything. They do not, unless there are no children and no surviving parents.
| Who survives you | How the estate is divided |
|---|---|
| Spouse, no children, no parents | Spouse takes 100% |
| Spouse and children | Spouse takes 50%, children share the other 50% equally |
| Spouse and parents, no children | Spouse takes 50%, parents take 50% |
| Children, no spouse | Children share 100% equally |
| Parents, no spouse, no children | Parents share 100% equally |
| No spouse, children, or parents | Siblings, then grandparents, then aunts and uncles, in that order |
Your CPF savings do not form part of your estate, so your will cannot give them away. This is the single most common estate planning error in Singapore. You can write the most careful will in the world and it will have zero effect on your CPF.
To control where your CPF goes, you make a separate CPF nomination. It is free, and you can do it online with Singpass, supplying your nominees' details and two witnesses (who cannot be your nominees). The nomination covers your Ordinary, Special, MediSave and Retirement Account balances, plus any CPF LIFE premium balance. By default the money is paid out in cash to your nominees, though the Enhanced Nomination Scheme lets you direct it into a nominee's own CPF account instead.
Skip the nomination and your CPF goes to the Public Trustee's Office, which distributes it under the intestacy rules (or the Muslim inheritance certificate), deducts an administrative fee, and can take up to six months to identify eligible family members. One more trap: getting married automatically revokes any earlier CPF nomination, so newlyweds need to make a fresh one.
Life insurance with a nomination pays the nominee directly, outside your estate, and outside your will. If the nomination is a revocable one (the most common type), a later will can override it, but relying on that is messy. If it is a trust nomination under section 49L of the Insurance Act, the proceeds are locked to those beneficiaries and your will cannot touch them. Cleaner to keep your insurance nominations and your will saying the same thing.
Where there is no valid insurance nomination at all, the insurer usually pays into your estate, and your family may need a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration before they see a cent. That delay is exactly what nominations exist to avoid.
Jointly held assets follow the right of survivorship, not your will. A bank account or property held as joint tenants passes automatically to the surviving co-owner when you die, regardless of what your will says. If you want your share to go to someone else, you need to hold the asset as tenants-in-common, then deal with it in the will. This matters a lot for couples and for parents who added a child as a joint account holder for convenience.
A will only works after you die. It does nothing if you are alive but lose mental capacity through dementia, stroke or an accident. For that you need a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA), which lets you appoint one or more donees to make decisions on your property and affairs, and on your personal welfare, if you can no longer decide for yourself. You must be at least 21 to make one.
The fees changed in your favour in 2026. The Office of the Public Guardian's S$70 application fee for LPA Form 1 (the standard form, used in about 98% of citizen applications) is now permanently waived for Singapore citizens from 1 April 2026. Permanent residents and foreigners still pay for Form 1. Form 2, the customised version, has to be drafted by a lawyer and costs more. On top of the OPG fee, everyone pays a separate certificate issuer fee to a doctor, lawyer or psychiatrist who confirms you understand the document.
Uptake is still low. As of February 2026, roughly 404,000 Singapore citizens (about 1 in 7) had registered an LPA. Without one, if you lose capacity your family has to apply to court for a deputyship order to manage your affairs, which is slower and more expensive than the waived LPA. Doing the LPA now, while it is free for citizens, is one of the cheapest pieces of estate planning available.
| Applicant | LPA Form 1 fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore citizen | Free (permanent from 1 Apr 2026) | Form 2 drafted by a lawyer costs extra |
| Permanent resident | S$90 | Plus certificate issuer fee |
| Foreigner | S$230 | Plus certificate issuer fee |
| All applicants | Certificate issuer fee on top | Paid to a doctor, lawyer or psychiatrist |
Having a will does not mean money moves instantly. Your executor still has to apply to court for a Grant of Probate, which confirms their authority to deal with your assets. For a non-contentious application a Grant typically takes about two to six months from filing, though the full journey from death to distribution can run eight months or longer once you add gathering documents, valuing assets and settling debts.
Legal fees for probate are separate from what you paid to write the will. A simple estate (cash plus one or two properties, a clear will, a handful of beneficiaries) commonly runs S$2,500 to S$5,000. Add CPF claims, HDB and private property, investments and more beneficiaries and you are looking at S$4,000 to S$8,000. Business interests or contested wills can push past S$15,000.
Good news on tax: Singapore has no inheritance or estate duty. Estate duty was abolished for deaths on or after 15 February 2008, so your beneficiaries do not pay a death tax on what they receive. The costs above are administrative and legal, not tax.
A will can name your children as beneficiaries, but it cannot make a 10-year-old sensible with money. By default in Singapore, a minor's inheritance is held until they turn 21, then handed over in full. If no trust is set up, the share usually sits with the Public Trustee's Office until the child reaches 21, who then receives the lot as a lump sum on their birthday. For a large estate, that means a young adult getting six figures with no strings the day they turn 21.
A testamentary trust is a trust written into your will that only comes alive after you die. You name a trustee to hold the money and release it on your terms: school fees and living costs while the child is young, then staged payouts at, say, 21, 25 and 30 instead of everything at once. It also keeps the inheritance separate from the child's own affairs, which matters if you worry about a future divorce or creditors reaching the money. A trust clause done properly needs a lawyer, so this is one of the things that pushes a will out of the online-platform price band.
This is not only for the wealthy. Any parent with life insurance is potentially leaving a large payout to a minor, and the gap between 'paid out at 21 in one go' and 'managed to age 30' is exactly what a testamentary trust closes.
A will only works if the original signed copy surfaces after you die. Courts want the original, not a photocopy, and if it cannot be found the law may presume you destroyed it on purpose, which can throw your estate back into the intestacy rules. Storage is part of the plan, not an afterthought.
You have a few options: keep it at home in a fireproof box, leave it with the lawyer or will writer who drafted it (many offer custody for a fee), or use a bank safe deposit. Whichever you pick, tell your executor where it is. The common failure is not a lost will but a will nobody knew existed or could locate.
Singapore also has a Wills Registry, run by the Singapore Academy of Law. It does not hold your will. It records who made a will, the date, who drafted it and where it is kept, so your family can find the original later. Depositing a record costs S$50 and a search costs S$10, and registering has no effect on whether the will is valid. For a free, government-run overview of pulling all of this together, the official estate planning starting point is the MyLegacy@LifeSG portal, which also lets you record document locations and CPF nomination status for your trusted persons.
You do not need to spend a fortune, but you do need more than one document. For most young working adults in Singapore, the sensible sequence is cheap first, then the will, then review.
Do your CPF nomination online (free) and, if you are a citizen, your LPA Form 1 (the OPG fee is waived; you only pay the certificate issuer). These two cover your CPF and your decision-making if you are incapacitated, and they cost almost nothing.
Check who is named on every life policy and make sure it matches what your will and CPF nomination say. Update stale nominations from an old job or a previous relationship.
Simple estate and confident with the rules? An online platform from around S$99 or a fixed-fee lawyer for a few hundred dollars is enough. Overseas assets, a business, young children needing a trust, or a blended family? Pay a lawyer for a proper will and advice; the S$1,000 to S$2,000 is cheaper than the dispute it prevents.
Marriage, divorce, a new child, buying property, a big inheritance, or moving assets overseas should each trigger a review. Marriage in particular revokes both an existing will (unless made in contemplation of that marriage) and an existing CPF nomination, so it is the one event you cannot ignore.
From free if you DIY, around S$99 and up on an online platform, S$200 to S$800 with a non-lawyer service, and roughly S$200 to S$1,500 with a lawyer for a simple to standard will. Complex estates with overseas assets or trusts can run S$2,000 or more.
No. CPF savings do not form part of your estate, so a will cannot give them away. You must make a separate CPF nomination (free, online via Singpass) to control where they go. Without a nomination, the Public Trustee distributes them under intestacy rules and can take up to six months.
The Intestate Succession Act decides. A spouse with children takes 50% and the children share the rest; a spouse with parents but no children splits 50/50 with the parents. Unmarried partners, stepchildren and charities get nothing. A will is the only way to override these fixed shares.
Yes, if it meets the Wills Act formalities: you are at least 21, it is in writing, you sign it, and two non-beneficiary witnesses sign in your presence. The risk with DIY is drafting errors and witnessing mistakes, which can invalidate the will or trigger a dispute.
Yes, they cover different times. A will only takes effect after you die. A Lasting Power of Attorney lets someone you trust make decisions if you lose mental capacity while alive. From 1 April 2026 the LPA Form 1 application fee is permanently waived for Singapore citizens, so it is nearly free to set up.
No. Estate duty was abolished for deaths on or after 15 February 2008, and Singapore has no inheritance tax. Beneficiaries do not pay a death tax on what they receive, though the estate still pays administrative and legal costs such as probate fees.
Yes. Getting married revokes an existing will (unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage) and automatically cancels any earlier CPF nomination. After marrying you should write a new will and make a fresh CPF nomination.
The executor applies for a Grant of Probate, which usually takes about two to six months for a straightforward, uncontested estate. The full process from death to distribution can be eight months or longer once debts, valuations and asset transfers are sorted out.
Yes, but by default a minor's inheritance is held until they turn 21 and then paid out in full. To control how and when they receive it, set up a testamentary trust inside your will. You name a trustee to manage the money and stagger payouts, for example at 21, 25 and 30, instead of one lump sum. A trust clause needs a lawyer to draft properly.
Keep the original signed copy somewhere safe, such as a home fireproof box, with the lawyer who drafted it, or in a bank safe deposit, and tell your executor exactly where it is. You can also lodge its location with the Singapore Academy of Law's Wills Registry for S$50, which records where the will is held but does not store the document itself. Courts need the original, so a will nobody can find is as good as no will.
Muslim estates follow faraid under the Administration of Muslim Law Act, which sets fixed shares for spouses and blood relatives. A Muslim can write a wasiat (will), but it can only give away up to one third of the estate, and that third cannot go to anyone already entitled under faraid. It can be directed to non-faraid recipients such as a charity, an adopted child or a non-Muslim. The other two thirds are distributed by the fixed faraid shares.
For a small tweak, such as changing one beneficiary or executor, a codicil (a signed, witnessed add-on) can work. For anything bigger, write a fresh will that revokes the old one, which avoids confusion between conflicting documents. Either way the new document needs the same Wills Act formalities. Marriage automatically revokes an existing will unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.