Preparing before a parent dies

The work in this article will feel premature. Do it anyway. Once your parent loses capacity (a stroke, a fall, a fast-moving cancer, the slow fog of dementia), the door closes on most of the decisions below. You can't sign an LPA on behalf of someone who no longer understands what they're signing. You can't change a CPF nomination from a hospital bed if they can't hold a pen.

What follows is what I wish someone had told me three years before I needed any of it. Not in order of importance. In rough order of how easy each step is to start.

The conversation

Sit down once. You don't need to cover everything. You need three answers:

• If their heart stops, do they want full medical intervention, or do they want to be allowed to die in peace?
• Burial or cremation? Which religious rites? Which temple, mosque, church, or columbarium?
• Who do they want making decisions for them if they can't?

Pick a quiet afternoon. Tell them you'd rather ask now than guess later. Some parents are relieved to be asked. Some shut it down, and the right move is to try again in six months.

Write down what they tell you, with a date. Email the note to yourself and your siblings. You'll need it.

The burial-versus-cremation question is the one that turns into a fight if you skip it. A father who wanted cremation, three aunties who insist on a Christian burial because that's what his mother had, a daughter caught in the middle on the night of the wake. This happens. The cost of asking once now is a ten-minute awkwardness. The cost of guessing later is months of family resentment that outlasts the funeral.

Advance Care Planning (ACP)

ACP is the formal version of that conversation, recorded in your parent's medical file so doctors at any restructured hospital can see it. It covers intubation, CPR, feeding tubes, ICU admission, and antibiotics in advanced illness.

You book ACP through a polyclinic, a restructured hospital, or one of the hospices in the Living Matters programme run by the Agency for Integrated Care. An ACP coordinator sits with your parent (and ideally one family member) for about an hour and walks through the scenarios. The completed form goes into the National Electronic Health Record. It's free.

See advance care planning in Singapore for the form names and how to book a coordinator.

Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA)

The LPA is the most useful document I'd never heard of until I needed it.

It lets your parent appoint you (or a sibling, or anyone they trust) to make decisions for them once they lose mental capacity. Two flavours: Personal Welfare covers housing, medical care, daily living; Property & Affairs covers bank accounts, CPF withdrawals, selling their flat. Most people grant both.

Apply via the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) website with Singpass. The application fee is $75 for Singapore citizens. You'll also pay a certificate issuer (a doctor, lawyer, or psychiatrist) between $50 and $300 to verify your parent has mental capacity when signing. Total: roughly $125 to $400.

Dementia is the reason to do this now. Once a doctor assesses your parent as lacking capacity, the LPA option is gone, and you're looking at a court-ordered deputyship that costs five figures and takes months. Details in the LPA article.

Will

If your parent dies without a will, their assets pass under the Intestate Succession Act (for non-Muslims) or under Muslim inheritance rules certified by the Syariah Court (for Muslims). The default split often surprises families. A surviving spouse and children don't get what most people assume.

A will costs $300 to $800 at a lawyer's office. Online services like Rockwills, Hugo, and WillCraft run $50 to $200. DIY templates are legal in Singapore as long as the will is signed in front of two witnesses who aren't beneficiaries. Pick whichever your parent will actually finish.

The executor named in the will is the person who applies for the Grant of Probate after death and distributes the estate. Make sure they know they're named. Cost trade-offs and the intestate default are in writing a will in Singapore.

CPF nomination

The cheapest, fastest item on the list. Ten minutes online with Singpass.

Without a CPF nomination, your parent's CPF money (Ordinary, Special, Medisave, Retirement Account) goes to the Public Trustee on death. The Public Trustee charges a fee and distributes per the Intestate Succession Act. Families wait six months or longer.

A CPF nomination skips that entirely. Named beneficiaries get paid in around two weeks. The same logic applies to SRS accounts and to insurance policies under the Insurance Act. Walk your parent through all three at once. Steps in the CPF nomination article.

The death file

Make a single folder, physical or digital, with the things your family will spend weeks hunting for otherwise. Bank account numbers and the branches they sit at. Insurance policies and the agent's contact. The original CPF nomination form. Property titles. The lease for the HDB flat. Any outstanding debts. The will and where the original is kept. Singpass credentials, the phone PIN, the laptop password, the email password. The list of GIRO arrangements that will need cancelling.

Most families discover bank accounts they didn't know existed months after the death. They learn about a paid-up insurance policy when a renewal notice arrives in the post. The Life Insurance Association of Singapore (LIA) runs a free search service for relatives: contact them with the death certificate and they will query all member insurers for any policies the deceased held. Doing this proactively is good. Filling the death file with what you already know is better.

Tell your siblings where the folder lives. A folder nobody can find is a folder that doesn't exist.

Things to record before you can't

Singapore parents are not famous for sitting still while their children interview them. Try anyway.

Record their voice. Not a speech. A normal conversation. Ask them about the food they grew up eating, the village or kampung their parents came from, what their first job paid. Use the voice memo app. Two minutes a week adds up. Most children who lose a parent describe the same regret a year in: they have thousands of photos and not a single recording of the voice.

Take photos with your parent, not just of them. Hand someone else the phone. Be in the frame. Most family photo libraries are weirdly empty of the adult children once they grow up; everyone is behind the camera, never in front of it. The funeral photo is the one image that gets blown up for the wake. The photos of you with your parent are the ones you live with afterwards.

Ask them their story. Not all at once. In small pieces, over Sunday lunches. What was the first house they lived in. How did they meet. What did your grandparents do for a living. What languages were spoken at home. The questions feel intrusive the first time and ordinary by the third. Whatever you collect is what survives.

The funeral photo

Most families end up scrolling through their phones at 2am after the death, trying to find a photo of their parent that doesn't have someone else in the frame. The image gets blown up to A3 and placed on an easel at the wake. A blurry crop from a wedding ten years ago is what most families settle for.

Do it now. Take your parent for a studio session, or set the camera in good light at home. Print one 8R copy. Save the digital file in three places. See preparing the funeral photo.

Where to start

If your parent is healthy and lucid: CPF nomination this week, will within the month, LPA before any cognitive decline starts. ACP is best done before any major diagnosis, but works fine at any stage.

If your parent has just been handed a serious diagnosis: LPA first, today if possible, before capacity becomes a question. Then the conversation. Then the rest.

The order matters less than starting. A messy half-finished version of all six beats a perfect plan for one.