Part of the Own Your Legacy: Getting Your Wills, LPAs, and Directives Sorted series
Of the instruments covered in this series, Advance Care Planning is the least legally formal and, for that reason, the one people most often underestimate.
It is not a single signed form with a fixed legal trigger, the way an Advance Medical Directive is. It is an ongoing process of thinking through, and communicating, how a person would want to be cared for if illness or injury left them unable to decide for themselves.
That informality is a feature, not a weakness, but it also means ACP works best when paired with the more formal instruments this series covers elsewhere.
What ACP Actually Involves
Advance Care Planning is a series of conversations, typically involving the person, their family, and where relevant a healthcare provider, about future care preferences. It might cover the kind of medical treatment someone would or would not want, who they would want making decisions on their behalf, where they would want to be cared for, and what matters to them about quality of life.
Unlike an AMD, ACP is not limited to the narrow terminal-illness scenario. It can address a much wider range of situations, including gradual decline from conditions like dementia that an AMD does not reach at all.
The output of ACP is typically a documented care plan, shared with family members and, where the person consents, with their healthcare providers, so that if a crisis arises, everyone involved has a clear sense of what the person would have wanted.
The myACP Self-Service Option
Since 13 June 2025, generally healthy Singaporeans aged 21 and above have been able to complete their ACP online through the myACP tool, without needing to arrange a session with a trained facilitator. This is available free of charge.
This makes it easy and convenient to execute even for those who are homebound. Previously, ACP required booking time with a facilitator, typically through a hospital, polyclinic, or community health provider.
The self-service option is intended for those without complex medical needs; people with more complicated health situations, or family disagreements to work through, may still benefit from a facilitated session.
How ACP Relates to AMD and LPA
ACP is deliberately broader than either of the other two instruments. It is meant to work alongside them rather than replace them:
- An AMD gives legal force to one specific decision, refusing extraordinary treatment in a terminal, unconscious, imminent-death scenario.
- An LPA gives a donee legal authority to act on someone’s behalf once they lose mental capacity.
ACP fills the space between and around both: it captures the values, preferences, and context that help a donee exercise their LPA authority the way the donor would have wanted, and it addresses situations, like a slow decline in capacity, that an AMD’s narrow trigger does not cover at all.
Put differently, the AMD and LPA are the legal machinery. ACP is the instruction manual that tells the people operating that machinery what the person actually wants. A donee acting under an LPA without any ACP conversation behind it is left guessing at intent during what is often already a stressful and emotional time for the family.
Why the Conversation Is Often Harder Than the Form
Talking about serious illness, incapacity, and death remains a difficult subject in many Singaporean families, and ACP asks people to have exactly that conversation before it becomes urgent.
This is arguably the real value of ACP: not the document it produces, but the fact that it forces the conversation to happen at all, while the person involved can still take part in it. Families who have never discussed these preferences often find themselves making guesses, and disagreeing about those guesses, at the worst possible moment.
Where ACP Fits Into a Complete Plan
ACP on its own has no independent legal force in the way an AMD or LPA does. It works by informing the people who do have legal authority, whether that is a donee under an LPA, a next of kin, or a treating doctor. For that reason, ACP is best treated as a complement to a properly executed LPA, not a substitute for one. The next article in this series looks at the LPA in detail, including how donees are appointed and what authority they can be given.
If you are putting together an Advance Care Plan alongside a Lasting Power of Attorney, or want help making sure the two are properly aligned, we can walk you through it.
