No family appoints a coordinator. One sibling simply turns out to be the one who picks up when the hospital calls, and by the time anyone notices, the arrangement is a year old and nobody agreed to it. Usually it is whoever lives nearest, or whoever rang most often before any of this started, which are both accidents rather than decisions.
This page is about making it a decision. It is the conversation behind almost every enquiry we take about an elderly parent in Singapore, and the families who have had it early are visibly different from the families who have not.
There are four things to divide, not one. Money is the only one most families discuss, and it is the least likely to cause the argument. The paperwork that assigns decision authority takes about a month to register in Singapore and cannot be done at all once a parent has lost capacity.
Write these down separately, because they do not have to go to the same person and they almost never should.
| What | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| Money | Who pays for care hours, transport, equipment, a helper, the difference between ward classes. Also who is reimbursed, and how often. |
| Presence | Who is physically there — for routine appointments, and on the day something goes wrong. These are different jobs. |
| Information | Who holds the medical history, medication list, doctors' names, insurance, bank and CPF details — and how the others see it without asking. |
| Authority | Who may legally decide, if your parent cannot. This one is paperwork with a deadline, not a family understanding. |
In Singapore the instrument is a Lasting Power of Attorney. Your parent, as donor, appoints one or more donees to act if they lose mental capacity — over personal welfare (where they live, who cares for them, healthcare matters) or property and affairs (bank accounts, bills, income, property), or both. They must be at least 21 and must have mental capacity at the time they make it.
The timeline is the part families get wrong:
So an LPA is about a month from decision to registered, and that month only exists while your parent still has capacity. After capacity is lost there is no LPA to make. What is left is an application to the Family Justice Courts for a court-appointed Deputy under the Mental Capacity Act — slower, more expensive, and decided by a judge rather than by your parent.
Form 1 covers wide-ranging standard powers and your parent can complete it themselves. Form 2 is for specific powers or more donees than Form 1 allows, and needs a lawyer. If siblings are to act jointly, or any sibling is to be excluded from a particular decision, that is a Form 2 conversation.
This is not legal advice and we are not lawyers. The authority is the Office of the Public Guardian, whose own guide sets out the forms, the donee rules and the fees. Verified 13 October 2026.
An AMD is a separate, much narrower document: a refusal of extraordinary life-sustaining treatment, effective only if your parent is terminally ill with death imminent. It appoints nobody and does nothing before that point, so it is not a substitute for an LPA.
Here is the part worth knowing. An AMD is confidential by law. A doctor may not ask a patient whether they have made one, and may check the Registrar only when they believe the patient is terminally ill and cannot communicate their wishes. If your parent has made an AMD and mentioned it to nobody, no sibling is going to discover it by asking around — not from the family doctor, not from the hospital. The only way you will know is if your parent tells you. That is a reason to ask, gently, now, and to write the answer down where all of you can see it.
The sibling who takes the calls becomes the only one who knows anything. They do not intend this and the others do not experience it as workload — they experience it as being managed. Resentment in these families almost never starts with money. It starts with somebody finding out second.
A group chat does not fix it. A chat is a record of messages, not a record of facts, and nobody can find the cardiologist's name in it four months later. What works is dull: one shared document, one place, everybody has the link.
Our document pack is the version of this we give clients, but a shared folder you maintain yourselves is worth more than a better template nobody updates.
Three siblings, three ways, seems obviously fair and tends to come apart within a year, for two reasons.
Incomes differ and nobody wants to say so. An equal split is a bigger sacrifice for one sibling than another, and the one who is stretched rarely says it out loud. They just start being slower to transfer.
The near sibling is already paying. In time — afternoons off work, the drive to the polyclinic, the waiting. That is real and it is invisible on a spreadsheet, so a cash split that ignores it quietly charges the nearest sibling twice.
What works better is to name the contributions separately and in proportion: cash in proportion to what people can carry, and an explicit discount or allowance for the sibling absorbing the logistics. Then put a number on the recurring costs so you are dividing something real rather than an anxiety — our home care cost guide has current Singapore figures for care hours, and the healthcare system guide explains what the ward classes actually change.
And set a review date. Six months, in the calendar, before anybody is angry. Arrangements made during a crisis are not meant to last a decade, but they do, because reopening them feels like an accusation.
Routine presence is appointments, shopping, the weekly visit. Crisis presence is getting on a plane. Families that plan only for the second are the ones where the near sibling burns out doing the first.
Two things are worth agreeing in advance. What triggers a flight — name the actual events, because "if it's serious" means something different to each of you, and in the moment the person on the ground is too stretched to arbitrate. And who covers the near sibling: a scheduled week where somebody else is the contact, so the default coordinator can go on holiday without a phone.
If your parent is in Singapore and none of you are, read caring for an elderly parent from overseas next, and what to do when a parent falls and you are not there for the crisis sequence.
Have it while nothing is wrong. It is a worse conversation in a hospital corridor and the answers are worse too.
Ask your parent, not each other, first: who would you want deciding, if you could not? Most families assume they know and are wrong about at least one answer, and a parent's preference settles arguments between siblings in a way nothing else does.
Then, between yourselves, five questions that each have a concrete answer:
Write the answers down and send them to everyone the same day. Not because anybody will breach it, but because an arrangement nobody has read is one every sibling remembers slightly in their own favour.
Then one of these jobs has no owner, and it is usually presence. A helper, a home care agency or a neighbour covers some of it; none of them can sit in a consultation and ask the second question. This is the gap we are most often asked to fill, and the honest version of that offer is on our hire a local page: we are independent, we take no commission from any provider, and we will tell you when you do not need us.
About a month. After the donees accept and the donor has seen a Certificate Issuer, the Office of the Public Guardian applies a mandatory three-week objection period, with roughly eight working days of processing on top. It can only be made while the donor still has mental capacity.
Nobody can make one on their behalf. The route left is an application to the Family Justice Courts for a court-appointed Deputy under the Mental Capacity Act, which is slower and more expensive than an LPA, and the choice of decision-maker is the court’s rather than your parent’s.
Yes, and that is usually a Form 2 rather than Form 1. Form 1 covers wide-ranging standard powers and the donor can complete it alone; Form 2 is needed for specific powers or more donees than Form 1 allows, and requires a lawyer.
Ask them. An AMD is confidential by law: a doctor may not ask a patient whether one exists, and may check the Registrar only if they believe the patient is terminally ill and cannot communicate. If your parent has told nobody, no sibling will find out from the family doctor or the hospital.
No. An AMD refuses extraordinary life-sustaining treatment and takes effect only in terminal illness with death imminent; it appoints nobody. An LPA appoints donees to make personal welfare or property and affairs decisions if capacity is lost. Most families need the LPA and have heard of neither.
Rarely equally. An equal split ignores both differing incomes and the time the nearest sibling is already contributing, which is why it tends to come apart within a year. Name cash and logistics as separate contributions, size the cash to what each person can carry, and set a review date six months out before anyone is angry.
One named person, with a named second if they do not pick up — agreed in advance rather than discovered. It does not have to be the sibling who holds the LPA or the one who pays the most, and often should not be.
Most of what makes Singapore easy is habit rather than information — choping a seat, reading the radar instead of the forecast, eating before the queue forms. The free SG Insider’s 10 collects the ten that matter most. Free, by email, no signup.
This site uses cookies for analytics only. Cookie policy