Last Updated on 21, March 2014
Frankly speaking you are already doing some sort of DIY estate planning yourself. When you hold joint accounts with your spouse, you are already doing estate planning. When you buy a house jointly with your wife, you are already doing some estate planning. When you buy insurance to provide for your dependents’ needs, you are already doing estate planning. The problem is that this way of doing estate planning is based on random and ad-hoc manner which could be wrong.
To do estate planning yourself, you’ll need to be familiar with Insurance Act, Intestate Succession Act, Wills Act, CPF Act, Guardianship of Infants Act, Trustees Act and Inheritance (Family Provision) Act.
Many do estate planning in a rather primitive way. For example, they think that by having a joint-account with their spouse, assets can be transferred to their spouse seamlessly. This is the wrong way of doing estate planning due to two reasons: The joint-account may not be in joint-tenancy (one bank in Singapore practices tenancy-in-common for their joint bank account) and secondly – what happens if two parties have a common accident?
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