LPA and Advance Medical Directive for PRs and foreigners

The "final days, hospital bills, frozen bank account" threads on r/askSingapore keep rediscovering the same split, so it's worth stating plainly. A will moves assets after you die. A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) lets a donee you've chosen act for you while you're alive but lack mental capacity. Different halves of the same problem, and most people only ever write one of them.

Without an LPA, the family usually ends up on the deputyship path through the courts instead. Expats and new PRs under-plan this more than most, largely because a home-country power of attorney feels like it ought to be enough, and it doesn't automatically unlock a Singapore bank or CPF.

This is orientation, not legal advice. Make the documents while capacity is clearly intact, because the whole mechanism rests on you having capacity at the moment you sign.

What an LPA actually does

You can be a donor from 21, provided you have the capacity to make the LPA in the first place. You grant your donee power over personal welfare, over property and affairs, or over both, and you choose which. The part people misread is when it bites: an LPA only takes effect once you lack capacity, or once the donee reasonably believes you do. It's not a general day-to-day power of attorney for convenience, which is what most people are quietly picturing when they ask about one.

Form 1 covers general powers with basic restrictions, and that's what most people need. Form 2 is the customised version with solicitor-drafted clauses, for grants that don't fit the standard shape. If you have neither, the fallback is deputyship through the Family Justice Courts, and that runs in months, not days.

What it costs: citizens, PRs and foreigners from 1 May 2026

These are the OPG application fees, so verify them live. The Certificate Issuer's professional fee sits on top and is separate.

The Mental Capacity (Public Guardian Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 are what set the PR S$30 and foreigner S$160 application fees, with effect from 1 May 2026. OPG's fees PDF is the citizen-facing summary of the same thing, and it carries the detail worth knowing before you click submit: there's no refund after submission, even if the application is rejected. We break the forms down side by side on LPA Form 1 vs Form 2 fees.

If you're on an EP or S Pass with a Singapore bank account, SRS, or property interests here, don't park this until PR comes through on the theory that an LPA is a local person's document. Foreigners can make one. They simply pay the foreigner band.

The sequence people skip

1. Decide who the donee or donees are, and whether they need personal welfare, property and affairs, or both.
2. Book an LPA Certificate Issuer, meaning a doctor, lawyer or psychiatrist on OPG's list. Their fee is separate from the application fee.
3. Complete Form 1 on OPGO, or go through a solicitor for Form 2.
4. Pay the OPG application fee when you're billed.
5. Store the access instructions for banks and insurers with the will and the CPF nomination map rather than in some other drawer (wills & CPF).

Activating the LPA later usually needs a medical report confirming the lack of capacity before a bank will act on it. This is exactly where Reddit's "just use their Singpass" shortcut collapses, because the person whose Singpass it is can no longer authenticate.

An Advance Medical Directive is a different document

An AMD tells doctors that if you're terminally ill and unconscious, you don't want extraordinary life-sustaining treatment used only to prolong life. It is not an LPA and it is not a will, and it doesn't quietly do either of their jobs.

• You have to be 21 or over, and not mentally disordered
• It's made through a doctor, with two witnesses at the same sitting, one of whom must be the doctor
• It's only valid once registered with the Registrar of Advance Medical Directives at MOH

Pair the AMD with Advance Care Planning conversations, and with knowing how your insurer handles hospital letters of guarantee (healthcare triage). And when the worst has already happened, the next of kin still have certificates, NEA and repatriation in front of them, which is a guide of its own.