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Straits Times
17-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Seniors should initiate legacy planning to provide clarity for loved ones: Halimah Yacob
Former president Halimah Yacob said the younger generation may not have the courage to broach the topic of death. ST PHOTO: TARYN NG SINGAPORE - The number of seniors is increasing in Singapore, but many still have not made plans for when they die, said former president Halimah Yacob, urging them to initiate such discussions. It is important to do so to make the process easier for loved ones and grieving children when the time comes, she said on May 17. Recognising that legacy planning is a sensitive topic, Madam Halimah said that the younger generation may not have the courage to broach the topic of death. 'Conveying our last wishes, or communicating to our loved ones our preferences regarding funeral rites and religious traditions, is critical so that they have clarity,' she said, speaking at a symposium on legacy planning by the Silver Caregivers Cooperative. It will make things easier for our loved ones when they know our wishes, so they are spared of confusion and everyone has peace of mind, she added. Madam Halimah said that like many, she has thought about legacy planning for a long time, but has not taken the first step to start. 'I'm 71 years old now, so I think I should do something about it,' said the mother of five. Legacy planning includes estate and asset distribution plans, drafting a will, making a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) to ensure a trusted person can take charge if one loses mental capacity, and discussing advance care plans to settle preferences for medical care. Digital assets – like financial accounts, e-mail, social media, online business accounts and tech devices – are increasingly being discussed in wills and end-of-life documentation. Some law firms have seen a significant increase in queries from people asking about cryptocurrencies or other types of digital assets like non-fungible tokens. The symposium, held at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Paya Lebar, was attended by around 120 people who signed up to learn more about legacy planning. Associate Professor Thang Leng Leng from the National University of Singapore, who spoke during a presentation at the event, said that beyond asset distribution, legacy planning also includes values, wishes and preferences. This includes how you want to be taken care of if you need long-term care, funeral arrangements, and passing down family values and traditions. Prof Thang said that one thing she regrets is not asking for family recipes from her grandfather, who cooked Hakka dishes. 'I am no longer able to taste that special food from my grandfather,' she said. Another speaker, Dr Adeline Lam, a senior consultant at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, spoke about the importance of establishing advance care plans. Advance care planning allows people to discuss their medical treatment preferences in advance, and enables them to designate someone to decide on medical care for them if they become mentally incapacitated. This helps to circumvent conflict when difference in opinions arise between family members regarding medical treatment for a loved one, she said. 'Having conversations and letting your family know your wishes so that they know what to do is important, so the burden of guilt is not there. They know that 'This is what Mum wants', for example,' she said. Lawyer Norhakim Md Shah urged the audience to make a LPA. He said the process to be appointed as a deputy under the Mental Capacity Act takes a long time. This process is initiated when a person loses mental capacity and does not have an LPA for a trusted person to make decisions on their behalf. 'Doing an LPA cuts short a problem you can foresee. Nobody lives forever, and there are things we can do to help the people around us so that they do not get themselves in a complicated situation just because we have chosen not to do anything to prepare.' The LPA application fee, which is usually $75, is waived for Singapore Citizens until the end of March 2026. Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
BBC News
29-03-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Isolated and confused: How a granddad 'vanished' from his family
David remembers the moment he found his elderly stepfather, John, unkempt and suffering from dementia, living alone in an unclean hotel room."I didn't think you'd leave an animal in the state that room was in," he says. " There was no care at all. You would not leave a vulnerable old man like that."Months earlier, John had vanished. His eldest granddaughter, Amy, had taken control of his welfare and his finances, and stopped any contact between John and the rest of his family, including Barbara, his wife of many Amy's help, John had changed his will, making her the sole beneficiary, and had then been left to live by himself in a single room, confused and family was one of hundreds who contacted the BBC after hearing The Willpower Detectives last year. The series revealed how a partner at an Essex-based law firm was using what's known as Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) to take over the finances of vulnerable June, Parliament will debate a private member's bill to provide extra safeguards to LPA. The bill - introduced by the MP Fabian Hamilton - has cross-party support, and is shaped in part by the BBC's investigations and the huge public response to the cases raised. The story of John Wilcox demonstrates how, in handing over responsibility for their financial assets, vulnerable people can sometimes be put at risk by members of their own many years of running a successful office-furnishing business in Leeds, John and Barbara Wilcox had retired and were living comfortably in had been married before. John had no children of his own, but he loved Barbara's son and daughter as his own, as well as her three grandchildren. To each of these, he had given enough money to buy their first everything changed in 2020 when John was diagnosed with condition caused a personality change, and John became delusional and paranoid. He started to accuse Barbara and his own brother Desmond of plotting against a collapse at home John was taken to hospital, where - because of Covid restrictions - nobody was allowed to isolation fed John's feelings of paranoia, and the suspicion that he had been abandoned by his was during this time that John's eldest granddaughter, Amy - the one person he still seemed to trust - began to take charge of his first, no-one in the family was suspicious. John had always been close to to them, John had requested and signed a form banning contact between anyone involved in his care and anyone in his family, apart from though his medical notes describe him as paranoid and delusional, John was declared as having "mental capacity" - this was significant because it meant he could legally grant someone lasting power of attorney over his says her efforts to raise concerns with social services were blanked: "They just didn't want to know. They weren't interested in the letters that we wrote." After three months in hospital, John was discharged into Amy's care. She suggested he could recuperate at a care home at Paignton in Devon, near where she lived, while she readied her house for him to stay this stage, the other family members thought this was just a temporary arrangement in everyone's best interests. Amy said that it was what John wanted, and it would be a respite for Barbara recalls: "As soon as she got him down there, the vitriol started." Amy told the rest of the family they no longer had any say about John's welfare, and they were not to try to contact response to their pleas, it was agreed that a niece of John's would call him once a week to check that he was six weeks after he was admitted to the care home, the niece made her regular call, only to be told that John had family was devastated - John had went to the police but were told he had signed a form in hospital instructing that no information should be shared with them. They were only told that John was not living with family discovered that John had signed an LPA document giving Amy power of attorney over all his property and a solicitor in Devon contacted Barbara asking about their home and joint assets. Barbara later found out about John's new will, which named Amy as the sole development had immediate and stressful consequences. The solicitor asked Barbara to begin the process of selling the home she had shared with John, in order to release his share of their assets. John's brother, Desmond, took the lead in trying to find out where John now was. It took him several says he rang 50 care homes, trying to track John down. He and Barbara also wrote to Amy asking her to at least tell them how her grandfather was, but they say they never received a Amy's aunt confronted her in person, and found out that John was in a hotel in knew that in the past, John had lent £100,000 to a friend who owned several hotels in south-west appeared that John had been put up at one of these hotels. The owner had made a deal to offset John's bill (a nightly rate of £265) against his outstanding father, David, drove to the hotel. He was horrified by what he found: "The conditions he was living in were appalling. I was absolutely astounded."John was renting the room only - with no cleaning services or food. There was a fridge and a microwave oven - in which he would heat ready meals supplied by David, it was the ultimate betrayal of a vulnerable man. He says that John was dishevelled and confused: "He was just abandoned. He hardly went out of that room and it was in a terrible state." Having found John, his family decided they needed to tread carefully. They say they wanted him to understand the truth about what had been done to him, and they were also worried that Amy might try to move him first, John refused to see Barbara, claiming she had tried to kill him, and that she had never come to see him in then one day, Barbara drove to John's hotel with her son David and his partner Julie. She stayed outside in the car but gave David a tin of flapjacks to take to John in his touch and smell of a faded everyday item - an old cake tin with some homemade flapjacks inside - seemed to have an effect on him."I know what's in there," he said to his stepson."Do you know who made them?" David remembers asking John. John replied: "Yes I do."David then offered to bring Barbara into the hotel room and John says she was heartbroken by her husband's physical and mental deterioration. He weighed only seven-and-a-half stone, and he was so weak that she thinks he would have died if he had been left much longer. It was a "very, very emotional" reunion, she remembers. Before long, they were holding hands and John had agreed to come home with next day, Barbara and her brother Mike came back to the hotel to pick John up. Mike says it felt like they were "planning a heist". He recalls that "as we drove away and started to get out of Torquay, I said: 'Oh gosh, we got away with that.'"Back in Wales, Barbara was able to see John's bank accounts, and discovered that Amy had taken more than £5,000 - there was just 16p left in his John's story had a happy ending of sorts. He managed to get the power of attorney and the new will cast aside, and lived for nine months with Barbara in Wales, before dying peacefully at tale highlights the difficulties involved when it comes to deciding who has control of what's often seen as "family money", and who will inherit of mental capacity have to be considered in situations like these, according to James Warner, a consultant in old-age psychiatry."Dementia makes people susceptible to manipulation and those involved with overseeing important changes need to be extra-vigilant," he elderly and vulnerable can quickly find themselves in situations where they are extremely vulnerable, he says, and more needs to be done to protect Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) holds power of attorney records for more than eight million people in England and Wales, but last year it investigated less than 1% of the cases brought to its MP Fabian Hamilton says the OPG can be "toothless" for vulnerable elderly people and their Hamilton says changes are needed to provide greater safeguards, and his private member's bill on attorney powers is due for its second reading in bill - which has cross-party support - would compel banks and regulators to check for issues such as cognitive decline, and greater scrutiny over whether an attorney is abusing their LPA thinks that the proposed legislation could have helped in her situation. "In cases like John's, where you have this kind of paranoia, solicitors involved with a power of attorney should be making enquiries of the family and verifying," she says. Meanwhile, John's family have had no contact with Amy, unable to forgive the hurt she caused them and what she put her grandfather say they still do not understand why Amy acted in the way she did. She (along with John's other grandchildren) had already been given money enough to buy a house each, and she stood to inherit more May 2024, Amy accepted a police caution for fraud - which in law is an admission of guilt - specifically because she had taken money from John's account after he had returned to Wales, and was no longer in her I wrote to Amy about this, she replied that she had only accepted the caution to lift the stress from herself and her family, and didn't regard it as told me that there were two sides to every story and that all of John's decisions were made by him in the company of his solicitor. She added that the decision not to tell John's family anything was at his request.
