07 January 2019

Dilemmas Dealing with End-of-Life

It's complex enough building up a wealth portfolio towards financial independence. I think the end-of-life part gets equally complex and deserves attention.

Here's the scenario and I welcome any suggestions how to go about it ...

My 90-year old mother lives with two of my siblings. She has not been in the best of health in recent years. Most recently, she suffered yet another fall at home and was evacuated to A&E. While at the hospital, she suffered a stroke. She is now bedridden and totally unable to communicate, or do anything whatsoever on her own accord. 

Nobody in my family knows whether she is on ElderShield.  If she does have ElderShield, I am quite sure she would qualify for the payout.  She satisfies all the conditions.  But how can we go about checking if she has ElderShield?

[Else, any ElderShield insurance she may have is as good as useless?]

Nobody is aware if she had made a CPF nomination.  There is a general consensus that she did. But nobody has a clue who she nominated. Is there some way to check?  The thing is that I was entrusted with a sum of her money to take care of for her.  Her CPF Medisave Account is apparently depleted. So I thought, why not top up her account with some of this money so that there is ready cash to pay her mounting hospital bill.  And if unused, it would earn 4%+.  But then one of the siblings pointed out that if she should unfortunately pass away, the CPF balance would get distributed to whoever was nominated.  And this may be inconsistent with her Will (for which she did do one). Is there any way to check who she nominated?

[It led me to think. If my wife and I made CPF nominations, and we both knew what each did. But our children don't know. Should one of us have passed on and the other is bedridden, how will our children be able to deal with the situation?]

What can be done now?

8 comments:

Createwealth8888 said...

Read? Another Example of CPF Nomination

Anonymous said...

You may try approaching cpf but i think they won't just divulge the identity of nominee. They may be able to tell you whether she has Eldershield & which insurer.

Or you can simply contact the 3 insurers to initiate Eldershield claim. They'll definitely tell you if her nric is not in their system.

Worse case you can talk to office of public guardian, under MSF. Mental Incapacity Act allows family to go thru court to apply for order to act on mental incapacitated's behalf.

Good for those of us still able to think about LPA and AMD.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/2-stripped-of-power-to-act-on-behalf-of-loved-one

Singapore Man of Leisure said...

Lizardo,

My regards to your mom.

In every hospitial, there's a social worker department.

No, you are not a hardship case.

But your situation may not be unique to them.


They could give you the overall roadmap and the relevant departments and authorities to contact regarding your queries. And what you may not have thought of.


Peace be with you.




Valuewarrior said...

Regards to your Mom.

I checked for my Mom's CPF nomination via CPF website.
If you have her Singpass login, you can do that as well.

Take care man.

Lizardo said...

Uncle8888,

Interesting arrangement.

Lizardo said...

Anon,

As expected, CPF can't release any info as they have to preserve the member's privacy.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Lizardo said...

Valuewarrior,

Unfortunately, she doesn't have a Singpass account to login with. She's very old school and doesn't trust having such things. Sigh. Thanks for the suggestion.

Lizardo said...

SMoL,

That's an option. Will raise it to my older siblings to explore.