Written answer by Minister for Law, K Shanmugam, to Parliamentary Question on the Drafting of Wills

07 OCT 2019

07 Oct 2019 Posted in Parliamentary speeches and responses

Ms Cheryl Chan Wei Ling (Member of Parliament for Fengshan SMC)

Question
To ask the Minister for Law (a) whether the Ministry has statistics regarding organisations or non-legally trained individuals who are advising clients on the drafting of wills; and (b) whether the Ministry intends to restrict, supervise or regulate non-lawyers and organisations that are not legally trained from dealing with the business of will drafting.

Written Answer:

  1. Will-writing services are not restricted solely to lawyers, and are not a regulated activity under the Legal Profession Act.1 This accords with the approach in other jurisdictions such as Britain.

  2. People who wish to make a will have a range of choices. They may write the will themselves, or seek the help of a will-writing service provider. Those who envisage their assets being distributed or managed in a complex manner can engage a lawyer to assist with drafting the will. The Legal Aid Bureau also offers legal assistance in the drafting of wills to Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents of limited means. We do not maintain statistics on the provision of will-writing services.

  3. We encourage the public to deposit information on their wills with the Wills Registry, which is a confidential registry maintained by the Public Trustee. Doing so will make it easier to locate the will in future.

Note:

1 Section 33(10)(a) of the Legal Profession Act carves out wills or other testamentary documents from the types of documents and instruments which only a practising advocate and solicitor may draw or prepare.

Last updated on 07 Oct 2019