In my previous post, I've promised to share the information on how to obtain a Letter of Administration. If you are reading this post, looking for more information, high chances that you are told you need to obtain L.O.A in order to withdraw any money from the banks. Also I'm sure the decease didn't have a will that you can exercise. This is the reason why you need that L.O.A.
First, I will like to send my condolences to you. I know losing a loved one is not something that you can just forget and be happy the next day. Other than having to deal with the heartache and memories of all the love ones. You have to deal to alot of mundane task like obtaining a L.O.A. I know what you are feeling right now, I've been through it and wished someone had guide me through these times. So I'm writing this down in order to help you. If you need to ask me anything, do post a comment to me, I'll try to reply as best as I can based on my experience.
You should already have realised in Singapore whenever a person dies, his assets is frozen. You cannot withdraw money from his bank account. If the bank account is a jointed account, then you are in luck. Before the death certificate is prepared, go withdraw out all the money and close the account. Bank will not be able to stop you.
If you have neither a will or a joint account to get the money from, you can try to call up the bank to ask if they are able to release the money through good will. Sometimes they do if the money involved is a small sum. DBS mention if the amount is less than 8k, they are ok to release them. When the bank refuse to give you any cent, normally they will advise you to contact public trustee.
https://www.mlaw.gov.sg/content/ipto/en/public-trustee/deceased-cpf-estate-monies/information-for-next-of-kin-cpf-monies.html
The website of public trustee are as above. Normally they only handle amount less than 50k. I find this amount to be ridiculously low, this amount probably was set like 30yrs ago and has never been increased since. Nowadays even in CPF we need at least 120k of minimum sum to withdraw anything. 50K is a joke. Anyway this is an argument for another day. If your amount is less than 50k, then you are in luck. Public trustee is able to handle all the estate for you without a charge. Just submit whatever documentations they require and it will be done.
By now if you have exhausted all the above options and still couldn't get any money. You truly need to get the L.O.A from a lawyer. Lawyers charge anything from 3k to 5k. Basically they just leave the paper work to their clerks, so it's actually not paying for their time. I did some googling and researching, I found a blog from Tan Kin Lian who mentioned about L.O.A way back in 2011. He did give a URL link that was suppose to be instruction on how to D.I.Y kit a L.O.A however the kit has since been removed. Going to the state court website also didn't give any information. I guess the state court must have received too many incomplete or wrongly done L.O.A that they totally removed it. Leaving the professional lawyers to handle it.
I am lucky that I have a good friend that works in a law firm. They charged me 2k and disbursement charges totaling up to $2437.90. I have to a make a few trips down to the lawyer firm. First trip I had to go down is to bring my mum to forfeit her rights and titles to Letter of Administration. For rights to L.O.A this is done by the party who has the biggest share of the assets. Usually the wife/husband will have 50% rights to the assets and another 50% split among all the children. So in this case, this is my mum. Forfeiting the rights however doesn't mean she forfeit her rights to 50% asset. It only means she choose not to proceed with handling of the L.O.A.
Unfortunately my mum is not educated. She does not understand english, she know knows a few mandarin words. She has basic speaking ability in cantonese only and top it up, she is hard of hearing. I had alot of problem telling her what I was doing. Since my friend and lawyer insisted she understands she is signing her rights to forfeit to L.O.A. This is because she needs to sign this document in front of the commissioner for oaths. I believe I repeat the same story to her about 100 times, in the end I had to lie to the lawyer that my mum understands. Good thing about my mum is, even if she doesn't understand anything she will just say ok and smile. This is like a loophole for people with dementia. This reminds me of Yang Yin who got his Godmother to sign all her assets to be controller by him.
Anyway after convincing the commissioner of oaths, we are allowed to finally sign the documents. Now I finally got the rights, things is easier with me making a few more trips down to deal with the rest of the documentation.The lawyer firm will ask you all the assets the decease have. Anything from HDB flats, property, bank accounts, insurance, CPF etc. After giving them all these information, they will contact all the relevant parties, eg DBS for a statement. Once they have compile the list. You will get the much needed L.O.A and grant of probate.
Armed with L.O.A, I first went to Bank of China (BOC). Bank of China seems very willing to give me the money. They just issued me a cheque however I had to pay $5 for closing the account. I've no idea why you need to pay to close an account, but anyway they deducted this amount directly from the account. I was immediately given a cheque and I can choose to bank in to anywhere. Next I went to DBS, before I got in, I was stopped by a young chap which I explain I had to withdraw and close the account. This chap asked if I have open an estate account. Now this is new because before I actually went down, I call DBS up and was assured I didn't need to bring or do anything other than the L.O.A which I was the person to administer. He insisted I need to open an estate account, which I told him this is not what I was told. Fortunately I insisted to go to the counter and ask the counter lady. True enough the lady asked if I have estate account, which i told her no. However she said I could bank into my personal account since I didn't want to open an estate account. The lady did all the paper work, however she told me they couldn't transfer until the next day which I was fine with. DBS didn't charge me anything for closing the account unlike BOC. However they seems less than willing to part with the money if I didn't open an estate account.
I reimburse myself for paying the lawyers fee. Finally this entire ordeal that took place 2 months ago was finally coming to a closure. I really have to say this in life, we need to pay for living, when we are sick we are burden with heavy medical bills which may require your close family to pay. Our government dictates we need to take care of our own family and not take handouts from gov. When we die, our close family needs to pay big money to cremates you. Doing a 3 days funeral and choosing to put ashes into a temple costs us about 10k total. Even after death when we need to withdraw money from the account, it cost 3-5k just to get that L.O.A.
You could have argued that if my dad did a will before he dies all these will be easy. However please don't forget some parents are old and have no idea what they needs to do. All these legal problems are just self made by a government who just want to do the "right" thing but don't want to acknowledge that alot of these can be avoided if they bothered to change the law to help people. Public trustee handling only 50k is really a big joke. It's not like 50k is very big in our current economy. It's not even enough to buy a COE paper. What do you expect from a government who only cares about making big profits but not taking care of it's own citizen. There are so many things they can do to improved our life yet they choose to concentrate their resources to make foreigners more comfortable here.
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