After her father suffered stroke, dementia, before signing a Lasting Power of Attorney, Sylvia Lim's been helping Singaporeans with end-of-life documents
SINGAPORE: Last weekend, Workers’ Party chair and Aljunied MP Sylvia Lim was again helping Singaporeans with concerns for their later years, heading a talk on preparing important documents.
The talk, titled “Should You Make A Will? Points to Consider”. “您是否应该立遗嘱？ 需要考虑的要点” was conducted in collaboration with the Singapore Management University Pro Bono Centre.
Ms Lim credited the students and staff of the centre, who have also volunteered their time in WP-held sessions on preparing a Lasting Power of Attorney document in the past, as having done the heavy lifting.
While some avoid talking about death and death planning, she wrote, this was not the case for the residents who attended the session at Kovan.
“Residents came away armed with some basic knowledge to organise their affairs. This meaningful collaboration has been most beneficial to our residents,” wrote Ms Lim.
The WP chair shared last year a personal story that gave insight as to why she holds such sessions.
“When my late father was suddenly stricken with dementia in 2010 due to a stroke, he had not executed a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA), and my family had to engage lawyers to apply to court to be appointed as his deputies,” she wrote in September 2025.
Ms Lim’s father, a policeman and a lawyer, passed away in 2017.
An LPA is important in everyone’s life, as it allows an individual who must be at least 21 years old to appoint one or more persons whom they trust to make decisions for them should they lose mental capacity. These include decisions about their health and personal welfare, as well as their property and assets.
Ms Lim wrote in her post last year that she had been “very encouraged” when hundreds of residents turned up for the explanation session on LPA, adding, “Having an LPA will make it easier for loved ones to act in one’s best interest.”
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She and other WP leaders and members who are also lawyers have been helping Singaporeans prepare these documents since at least 2018.
In 2019, Ms Lim and Chen Show Mao, who was also then an Aljunied MP, led a team of volunteer lawyers in certifying LPAs for residents.
More recently, Aljunied MP Fadli Fawzi organised a similar event in Kaki Bukit, the ward he represents in Parliament, last March. He also joined the WP’s Punggol team and several other lawyers in helping almost 150 Singaporeans to accomplish their LPAs. /TISG