Wills and the LPA

Researched and written 2026-09-30 16:07 SGT · 9 sources listed at the end · draft 1 · figures verified against the named sources on the date shown; where a source has since moved, the element carries a marker.

Two documents, done while you still can. A will decides who gets what after you die. A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) decides who can act for you if you lose the mental capacity to decide for yourself, before that. Neither costs much or takes long to put in place. Not having them does — sometimes for months, and sometimes at exactly the point your family can least afford the delay.

The mechanics: two documents, two different failures

A will must be in writing, made by someone at least 21, signed at its foot by the testator, and witnessed by two people present together who each sign in the testator's presence. A gift to a witness, or to a witness's spouse, is void — so choosing witnesses who inherit nothing is not a formality, it's how the gift survives.

An LPA is a deed by which a donor aged 21 or above appoints one or more donees to make decisions if the donor loses mental capacity — for personal welfare, for property and financial affairs, or both. It sits dormant from the day it's signed: registering it does nothing on its own. It only switches on once a registered medical practitioner certifies the donor has actually lost capacity, and switches off again the moment capacity temporarily returns, then back on if it's lost again.

• A will only ever acts after death — while you're alive, it does nothing at all, and you can change it any time
• An LPA only ever acts before death, and only once incapacity is certified — it dies the instant you do
• A will has no analogue for the gap in between: the years you might be alive but unable to decide
• An LPA has no analogue for what happens after death: that's the will's and the Intestate Succession Act's job

Eligibility: who can make one, and who can act for you

Form 1, the general-powers LPA, is what about 98% of Singapore Citizens who make one actually use — no lawyer required, filed by the donor directly. Form 2 is for customised powers, such as restricting a donee from selling a specific property, and must be drafted by a Singapore solicitor. Both need an LPA Certificate Issuer — an accredited doctor or a Singapore-admitted lawyer — to witness and certify that the donor understands what they're signing.

A donee is any unpaid person 21 or over, or a professional donee; up to two donees plus one replacement can be named under Form 1, acting jointly or jointly-and-severally. Any adult of sound mind may serve as an executor of a will too, including a trust corporation or professional firm — the minimum age is 21, and an undischarged bankrupt is generally unsuitable given the role involves handling estate money. A beneficiary can serve as executor; the built-in conflict — deciding on assets they personally benefit from — is a known and accepted one, not a bar.

An executor or donee living overseas isn't disqualified, but faces real friction swearing affidavits and dealing with Singapore banks, HDB and the courts from a distance — which is why wills naming an overseas executor often add a local co-executor or professional firm, plus a named alternate.

Citizenship status: yours, and the people you name

The LPA's own application fee scales by your status: Form 1 is free for a Singapore Citizen from 1 April 2026 (waived before that), S$90 for a Permanent Resident, S$230 for a foreigner; Form 2 runs S$185 / S$230 / S$275 by the same three tiers. The Certificate Issuer's separate professional fee is payable by everyone regardless of citizenship, and no refund is given once OPG has the application, whatever the outcome.

Citizenship status matters far more sharply on the other side of the will: who you're allowed to leave residential property to. Under the Residential Property Act, no estate or interest in residential property may pass by bequest, succession or intestacy to a foreign person — defined as anyone who isn't a Singapore citizen, company, LLP or society. That bar doesn't reach a surviving joint tenant, foreign or not: joint-tenancy survivorship sits outside the will entirely. Where the bar does bite, the property can't be transferred to the foreign beneficiary directly — the executor sells it, and the net proceeds after costs go to that beneficiary instead of the property itself.

US, Swiss, Liechtenstein, Norwegian and Icelandic nationals are taxed as Singapore Citizens for stamp duty under their free trade agreements — but that parity is a stamp-duty rule only. It does not touch the Residential Property Act: an FTA national inheriting or buying landed housing still needs Land Dealings Approval Unit approval on the same terms as any other foreigner.

• Singapore Citizen beneficiary: inherits residential property directly, no RPA bar, no ABSD on the transfer
• Permanent Resident beneficiary: inherits directly — the RPA bar targets foreign persons, not PRs
• Foreigner (non-FTA) beneficiary: barred from taking the property itself under the RPA; receives sale proceeds instead, unless they were a surviving joint tenant
• FTA national (US, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland) beneficiary: stamp-duty parity with citizens, but still a foreign person for the RPA's inheritance bar and for landed housing

Taxes: what death does, and doesn't, trigger

Estate duty was abolished for deaths on and after 15 February 2008 — Singapore has no inheritance tax or estate tax today, at any estate size. A residential property passing to a beneficiary under a will or intestacy attracts no Buyer's Stamp Duty on the assent, and no Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty either. That inherited property still counts as a property the beneficiary owns for ABSD purposes the next time they buy — the exemption is on the way in, not on what it does to your count afterward.

Property tax doesn't pause for probate. IRAS lets a deceased owner's residential property keep the lower owner-occupier tax rate for up to two years from the date of death or the date of transfer, whichever comes first, as a concession — after that, if it's still sitting under the deceased's name, the higher non-owner-occupier rate applies. That two-year clock is one more reason the length of probate matters in cash terms, not just in patience.

If a beneficiary lets the inherited property out rather than living in it, the rent is their personal income, taxed at their own rate — and if that beneficiary is a non-resident, IRAS's non-resident rate on Singapore rental income is 24% (22% before Year of Assessment 2024), with a tax return required either way.

Borrowing: what incapacity, and death, do to a mortgage

Without a valid, registered LPA, a bank cannot let anyone operate an incapacitated customer's account — mortgage payments included. The account is effectively frozen until the family produces a registered LPA or a court order. HDB works the same way: where a flat owner loses capacity, a donee or a court-appointed deputy must write to HDB with the LPA, the donee's IC, and a medical certificate stating the loss of capacity is likely permanent, before anything on the flat can move.

Without any LPA at all, the family has no shortcut — they need a court-appointed Deputy under the Mental Capacity Act before CPF Board, or anyone else, will act on their instructions. While that application is pending, a caregiver can write to CPF Board to withdraw up to S$10,000 of the member's own CPF savings for maintenance costs, but that's a stopgap, not a mortgage solution.

On death, the LPA itself is a different instrument that ends the instant it's needed most: it is automatically revoked, and the donee's authority ends immediately, for financial and welfare matters alike. Every account and property it was managing freezes again until the executor holds a Grant of Probate, or an administrator holds Letters of Administration. There is no document that bridges incapacity straight through to death — the LPA hands off to probate, with a gap while the court catches up.

Control: reno, A&A and who's allowed to touch the property

Estate property, HDB or private, cannot be legally transferred, sold, or — in practice — renovated on anyone's authority until the executor or administrator holds the grant. No trust over an HDB flat may be created without HDB's prior written approval, and HDB is unlikely to pre-approve a trust created by a will, since the trust doesn't exist until the testator dies. Control of the physical asset — who can commission an A&A, who can commit to a rebuild, who can even sign a tenancy — sits with nobody until the grant is issued, then passes to the executor administering it, then finally to the beneficiary once it's transferred into their name.

If the family wants to keep an inherited HDB flat rather than sell it, the proposed owners must be immediate family, at least 21, include at least one Singapore Citizen or PR, and not already own another HDB, DBSS or EC flat — an heir who does must dispose of it within 6 months. Only once that ownership question is settled does anyone actually control what happens to the unit next.

Conveyancing: from grant to caveat to completion

A property held in joint tenancy passes automatically and in full to the surviving owner on death — outside the will, outside the estate. The survivor lodges a Notice of Death with the Singapore Land Authority, attaching a certified death certificate, to update the register; for HDB that's about S$68.30 and takes roughly four months to complete. Everything else — a sole-owned or tenants-in-common property — waits on the grant.

With the grant in hand, an executor with a valid Singpass can endorse HDB resale documents on the HDB Flat Portal directly; a non-resident executor has to sign in person. HDB asks for the original Grant of Probate and will (or Grant of Letters of Administration and Statement of Assets), plus the death certificate, before the transfer moves at all. An executor or administrator must sell an HDB estate flat within 6 years of death; the full estate sale itself, from marketing to completion, typically runs 6 to 9 months.

Separately from all of this, the Singapore Academy of Law's Wills Repository, launched 9 September 2026, lets a testator have a participating law firm deposit a digital copy of the will with SAL, accessible only to people the testator names — deposits are free through participating firms until 31 March 2027. It's a different, newer service from the older Wills Registry, which only records that a will exists and where the original sits, not the document itself.

Estate: probate, intestacy, and what happens without a will

You can apply for a Grant of Probate only where the deceased left a valid will that names you as executor; without a valid will the route is Letters of Administration instead, and an estate of S$50,000 or less may be handled by the Public Trustee's Office without a grant at all. Court processing itself runs roughly 2 to 3 months once filed, but the fuller path — gathering documents, filing, a hearing only if something is contested, then collecting the sealed grant — commonly stretches 3 to 6 months for a straightforward estate from death to grant, longer where anything is disputed. [⚠ estate.probate.eligibility_2026_06_15: sources differ; awaiting a ruling]

Without a valid will, the Intestate Succession Act decides who gets what, and it does not ask what you would have wanted. Where there's a spouse and children, the spouse takes half and the children split the other half equally; a spouse with no surviving children or parents takes everything; children with no surviving spouse split it equally between them.

• Spouse only, no children or parents: spouse takes all
• Spouse and children: half to spouse, half split among children
• Children only, no spouse: split equally
• Spouse and parents, no children: half to spouse, half to parents
• Parents only: split equally
• Siblings only: split equally
• No next of kin at all: the estate passes to the Government

The Intestate Succession Act does not apply to a Muslim domiciled in Singapore — that estate is distributed under Islamic inheritance law (faraid), and the Syariah Court must issue an Inheritance Certificate naming beneficiaries and shares before a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration can even be sought. CPF savings sit outside all of this either way — they're not covered by a will and don't form part of the estate; they pass by CPF nomination, or by the Public Trustee under intestacy rules if there's no nomination, on a track entirely separate from the property.

The twelve questions: what a will and LPA actually change

Where I fit

None of this needs a realtor, and I'm not pretending it does. Where I come in is later — when a will names an executor who has to sell an HDB flat within six years, or a family decides to keep an inherited property and let it out instead. I've done the groundwork on what that actually involves — the RPA bar, the six-year clock, the retention conditions — for free, and want nothing for reading this page. If you ever get to the point of needing a realty mandate on the property this document is protecting, think of me.

What a realtor earns, and where the incentive points

A CEA-registered agent earns commission only when a transaction closes — typically a percentage of the sale or a month or two of rent, split with the co-broke agent on the other side if there is one. That structure means an agent's income depends on a sale happening, and happening soon, not on whether selling is actually the right call for an estate that could instead be let out, held, or split between beneficiaries. Be plain-eyed about that before engaging one: the agent's incentive points toward a transaction, even when the honest answer — for a while, or permanently — is not to sell at all.

Sources

• Family Justice Courts — Apply for probate (2026-06-15) · https://www.familyjusticecourts.gov.sg/
• MSF — Office of the Public Guardian — LPA guidance and fee table (2026-09-29) · https://www.msf.gov.sg/opg
• IRAS — Estate duty, stamp duty (BSD/ABSD) on inherited property, property tax for deceased owners (2026-09-29) · https://www.iras.gov.sg/
• SLA — Notice of Death and land register updates (2026-09-29) · https://www.sla.gov.sg/
• HDB — LPA and executor documentation for HDB flats (2026-09-29) · https://www.hdb.gov.sg/
• CPF Board — Incapacity without an LPA: deputyship and emergency withdrawal (2026-09-29) · https://www.cpf.gov.sg/
• Singapore Academy of Law — Wills Registry and Wills Repository Service (2026-09-29) · https://www.sal.org.sg/
• AGC — Residential Property Act 1976 (2026-09-30) · https://sso.agc.gov.sg/
• Association of Banks in Singapore — Guidelines on processing an LPA (2019-09-24) · https://abs.org.sg/