Mental Capacity Act

Imagine this – You have a sum of money in a bank but the bank refuse to let you withdraw it because the staff felt you do not have the mental capacity to manage it. If you think this sounds ridiculous, you many want to know this is a real case which happen a decade ago.

(The link to the full story had broken but you can read the full legal suit between Mdm. Hwang vs OCBC via here. )

While most of us do not have that $8.8 million in banks now, we can neither assume we will not have it in future nor we will not suffer from dementia. With more and more elderly in Singapore and such incidents will become more common, the Mental Capacity Act was enacted in 2008. This Act allows a person to appoint someone to act on his behalf when he does not have the capacity to make a decision for himself due to mental incapacity. The Parliament amended the Mental Capacity Act in 2016 to allow paid professionals to make key decisions for those who can no longer decide for themselves as there are more elderly without any family members or there may not be any suitable family member who are suitable to handle the elderly’s affairs.

The common concerns when I shared with people on the Mental Capacity Act or more commonly known as Lasting Power Attorney(LPA) is they are worried the appointed person abuse his authority or takes over his assets etc. If you wish to know more about the topic of safeguarding your assets and distributing it to the right people in the right way, you may want to attend this session organised by my company.

Here’s a little video on dementia but Mental Capacity Act is not just about dementia. So, what is LPA?