Dependant’s Pass in Singapore: bringing spouse and children

Short answer: A Dependant's Pass lets your spouse and unmarried kids under 21 live here on the back of your main pass, as long as you hold an EP or S Pass and earn a fixed monthly salary of at least $6,000. It is not a work pass. An ordinary job needs its own EP, S Pass, or Work Permit, and the Letter of Consent now really only covers eligible business owners. And if your main EP goes, the DPs go with it, so have an STVP bridge ready for the whole household.

A Dependant's Pass (DP) is how your spouse and unmarried children under 21 come with you, riding on your main pass — usually an Employment Pass or S Pass. Worth knowing up front: having the main pass isn't enough on its own. MOM layers its own family-pass salary rule on top.

Who actually qualifies

You can get DPs for your family if you meet all three of MOM's conditions:

• You hold an Employment Pass or S Pass.
• You earn a fixed monthly salary of at least $6,000. That's your own salary, not your combined household income, so a spouse's pay doesn't count towards it.
• You're sponsored by an established, Singapore-registered company, which in practice means your employer.

The family members who can go on a DP are your legally married spouse and your unmarried children under 21, including legally adopted children. MOM can and does move salary thresholds, so check the live figure before you commit to anything from overseas. Especially a school contract.

Everyone else in the household needs a different pass. For an EP holder, MOM maps it like this:

The LTVP has its own catches, covered in long-term visit passes for partners and parents. A child's DP eligibility ends at 21, so if you have an older teenager, read DP child turning 21 early.

One exclusion catches intra-company transferees. If your EP was applied for as an overseas intra-corporate transferee under WTO GATS or a free trade agreement, your family can't get DPs or LTVPs unless a free trade agreement specifically covers them and they meet the usual criteria.

Applying: who files, fees and timing

Your employer, or an employment agent they appoint, applies for each DP through EP eService on the myMOM Portal. You can't file it yourself. It's a separate application for each family member, and it can go in with your own pass application or later.

The in-principle approval (IPA) letter doubles as a pre-approved single-entry visa for your family to fly in on. Bring them in once the DP is approved rather than on a visit pass while you wait, because MOM says plainly it won't extend a visit pass that runs out before the DP is issued. They do need to be in Singapore for the pass to be issued.

A DP lasts as long as your main pass or the duration requested, whichever is shorter. A short main pass means short DPs.

Get these ready early

• The personal particulars page of each person's passport, plus the parent's page if a child shares a parent's passport
• Your marriage certificate, for your spouse
• Each child's official birth certificate showing the parents' names, or the adoption order for an adopted child
• For foreign-born children aged 12 and under applying for a new DP, the Verification of Vaccination Requirements document from the Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA)
• An English translation of anything that isn't in English. MOM wants the original and the translation uploaded together as one file.
• Your main pass IPA or issued-pass details

MOM may ask for more once it reviews the application.

Renewing a DP

Your employer can renew DPs up to 6 months before they expire, and has to apply before the expiry date. Miss it and you're back to a fresh application. Renewal costs $225 per pass and most cases come back within 3 weeks. Renewing early costs you nothing, because the renewed pass starts when the current one ends.

Renewals are assessed against whatever eligibility criteria are in force at the time, and they aren't guaranteed. If your salary has slipped below the family threshold, renewal is where you find out.

Working on a DP: please read this bit

This is the one that catches families out, so let's be blunt. A DP is not a work pass.

Since 1 May 2021, a DP holder who wants a normal job needs their own EP, S Pass, or Work Permit. The advice you'll still find on forums, that your employer can just sort out a Letter of Consent, stopped being true years ago. People are still repeating it. If an employer offers that, correct it at the offer stage rather than on the start date, and ask them to apply for a work pass instead.

What that means in practice:

1. An ordinary job with a Singapore employer. The employer applies for an EP, S Pass or a DP-Work Permit (DP-WP). With an EP or S Pass your spouse has to meet the usual criteria, the DP is cancelled before the new pass is issued, and their stay no longer depends on yours. A DP-WP is open to any nationality and has no minimum qualifying salary, but its validity is tied to the DP and the employer still needs Work Permit quota and pays levy.
2. Running a Singapore business. That's the Letter of Consent below. Check both the first-time eligibility and the renewal rules before anyone resigns a job abroad, because the renewal test is the harder one.
3. Remote work for overseas clients or an overseas employer only. MOM's FAQ says you don't need a work pass for that. Work for gain for a Singapore-registered organisation or a Singapore client does need one. The details are in side income and freelancing.
4. Unpaid charitable volunteering. No work pass needed, as long as there's no payment and the purpose is charitable.

If your main pass is a ONE Pass, this isn't your rulebook. A ONE Pass holder's spouse can work for an employer on an LOC, which EP and S Pass households can't copy. That's covered in ONE Pass spouse LOC.

For what the job market actually looks like from the trailing-partner side, we wrote that up separately: trailing partner careers.

The business-owner Letter of Consent

The LOC does still exist, but it's now for DP holders running a business: an ACRA-registered sole proprietor, partner, or company director holding at least 30% of the shares (or a member of a company limited by guarantee). It's free, most applications are decided within 4 weeks, and your DP needs at least 3 months of validity left when you apply. You can't start operating the business until the LOC is in hand.

Your first LOC runs for one year from issue or up to your DP's expiry, whichever is shorter. Renewals run up to the DP's expiry. The LOC stops being valid the moment the DP is cancelled or expires, and also when the business is no longer active, at which point you still have to cancel it within a week.

Renewing the LOC

Renewals are where solo consultancies fall over. The first LOC is about who you are in the business. Renewal adds a local-hire test, which is why year two is when the "my LOC renewal got rejected" posts appear. When you submit the renewal, you need:

• At least 3 months of validity left on your DP
• At least one Singaporean or PR employee earning at least the Local Qualifying Salary, which is $1,800 a month for a full-time employee since 1 July 2026
• CPF contributions for that hire for at least 3 consecutive months before the submission date

A one-person business has nothing to show against that bar, and it can't be fixed in the week you notice it. Count backwards from your renewal date, not forwards from today. CPF for a month's wages is due by the end of that month, and employers face enforcement if it isn't paid by the 14th of the next, so give the hire some slack.

The mechanics are kinder. You can renew up to 6 months before the LOC expires, and you can do it when you renew the DP. It's free, most cases are done within 3 weeks, and the renewed LOC starts when the current one ends. Update the business's turnover information before you submit through EP eService.

Each layer rests on the one below, so the order matters. Your main pass renewal comes first, then the DP renewal, then the LOC. If your main pass renewal runs late, the DP and the LOC fall with it.

If a renewal does fail and your spouse still has Singapore clients, there are three honest options: pause the local invoicing before the LOC expires, hire someone to the published standard, or move onto an employer-sponsored or self-sponsored EP through a properly capitalised Pte Ltd (incorporating as a foreigner). Carrying on quietly under an expired LOC isn't one of them, and having some overseas clients doesn't change the answer for the Singapore ones.

When the main EP gets cancelled

Your DPs are tied to your pass. MOM is blunt about it: once an EP is cancelled, all the family passes issued under it are cancelled too, and they can't be reinstated. Any LOC or DP-Work Permit your spouse holds falls with their DP. So your family needs a lawful way to stay while things get sorted.

That bridge is a Short-Term Visit Pass, which the employer requests through EP eService. It gives up to 90 days of stay from the date of application, and MOM's DP cancellation page offers the same STVP for DP holders still in Singapore. Nobody can work on it. It's for staying while you sort out the next pass or pack up, so hold off on trips out of the country until you know where you stand.

So: ask HR in writing, before cancel day, for the full 90 days, and make sure the request covers everyone in the household rather than just you. It's an awkward conversation to have while you're also negotiating an exit, and it's much more awkward to have afterwards. The full sequence, IR21 and the graduate LTVP angle included, is in between jobs on an EP. The principal-side rules live on MOM's cancel an Employment Pass page, and the family side on MOM's cancel a Dependant's Pass page.

Schools and housing

School waitlists and condo viewings will run in parallel with your IPA timing. That's uncomfortable, and it's also completely normal. Use provisional holds where a school offers them, and read the cancellation terms properly before you hand over anything large — a delayed main pass is exactly the scenario those penalties were written for. More on that in school waitlist realism.

A sensible order to do things in

1. Main pass clarity, with the salary fixed for MOM at or above the $6,000 family threshold
2. DP applications, filed with the main pass or straight after
3. Family flights once the DP IPAs are in hand
4. Housing deposit, on a flexible first lease if schools are still waitlisted
5. School enrolment fees

Babies born in Singapore

A newborn doesn't inherit your pass. Register the birth through LifeSG (MOM asks you to do it within 14 calendar days, though ICA's legal deadline is 42 days), get a passport from your embassy or high commission, and have your employer apply for the DP within 6 weeks of birth. An ICA Special Pass covers the baby's stay for 42 days from the date of birth in the meantime. The DP can be lodged with proof of the passport application, but it won't be issued until the passport is ready. All the clocks are in newborn pass and birth registration.

One budgeting note

Don't budget for the trailing partner earning anything in month one. Build the household budget as a single-income posting until a second pass has actually been issued, not just approved in principle, and treat anything earlier as a nice surprise. The household side of that, from childcare costs to the job search itself, is in dual-career households.