Father says it's all arranged, but nobody has seen anything. What can we actually check?
Four things, and no more. Company ownership is public: ACRA's Bizfile sells a Business Profile for S$5.50 and a People Profile for S$33, which tracks one person's involvement across every registered entity. Property ownership is public: a land titles search through the Singapore Land Authority's INLIS service returns the registered proprietor, with no subscription fee. A Wills Registry search costs S$10 and tells you whether a will record exists and where the original is held, never its contents. An Office of the Public Guardian search costs S$30 and covers the register of Lasting Powers of Attorney. Everything else — the CPF nomination, the insurance nominations, the trust deeds, the will itself — is closed while he is alive, by design. That distribution is itself the answer: what is checkable tells you whether arranged means structure or sentiment.
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What is public, and what it costs
Since 3 January 2016, section 196A of the Companies Act 1967 has required the Registrar to keep and maintain an electronic register of members for every private company, containing the names of the members and a statement of the shares held by each of them, the date of every allotment, and the date each person was entered in the register. That is why a Business Profile from Bizfile, at S$5.50, shows who owns the company and not merely who runs it. A People Profile, at S$33, traces one individual's involvement across different businesses — the cheapest way to discover that the operating company you know about sits under a holding company you did not. Extracts of documents already filed, including annual returns and audited accounts, start at S$11, and Registers, being official lists of members, directors, chief executives, secretaries or auditors, also start at S$11. ACRA's own fee page was last updated on 4 February 2026. Bizfile's free search functions, which need no login, return a business's status and registered address.
The register is meant to be current. ACRA requires directors and secretaries to report changes to company information, officers and shareholders within 14 days, and treats the date of filing as the date a person officially becomes or stops being a member. Property is the second public record. The Singapore Land Authority's Integrated Land Information Service returns property title information, property ownership information and lot particulars, and no subscription fee is required for the service; a search runs on the lot number and survey district number or the title number, and while an address search is offered, the Registry does not maintain address records and cautions searchers to confirm the address against the lot. A title search names the registered proprietor and shows whether a caveat has been lodged. It does not show who sits behind a nominee or a trustee.
The registries that record existence, not contents
The Wills Registry, maintained by the Singapore Academy of Law since it took the service over from the Public Trustee's Office on 4 May 2020, records the testator's details, the date of the will, who drew it up, and where the original is held. It does not keep the will or a copy of it. Depositing a record costs S$50 per submission and a search costs S$10 per submission. A search runs on the testator's identification number and requires the searcher to state a relationship to the testator and upload supporting documents; results are emailed. Because deposit is voluntary, a nil result is not evidence that no will exists — but a hit tells you that a will was drawn by a named firm on a named date and is held somewhere identifiable, which is three facts more than the family had.
Lasting Powers of Attorney sit in a statutory register. Section 31 of the Mental Capacity Act 2008 makes it a function of the Public Guardian to establish and maintain a register of Lasting Powers of Attorney, a register of orders appointing deputies, and a register of professional deputies. A search request costs S$30, is submitted online through OPG Online using Singpass, and returns who the donees are and the types of powers they hold; a court order search returns the active deputies and the date of the order. Approval is not automatic — the Office of the Public Guardian states plainly that no refunds are given for requests that are not approved. A certified copy of the registered LPA itself is a separate S$30 application and is generally not released to anyone who is not a named party, meaning the donor and the donee, unless a court directs otherwise. That page was last updated on 4 December 2024.
What is closed while he is alive — and that is deliberate
CPF is the clearest example. The Board's own wording is that a member's CPF account information remains confidential while he is alive; nominees and eligible family members under the intestacy rules gain access to account information only upon his death. Only the member can view his own nomination. The stakes are not small: CPF savings do not form part of the estate and cannot be included in a will, a nomination covers the Ordinary, Special, MediSave and Retirement Accounts plus the CPF LIFE premium balance and discounted Singtel shares, and marriage automatically revokes any existing nomination while divorce does not. Where there is no nomination at all, the savings go to the Public Trustee's Office, which deducts an administrative fee and distributes under the intestacy rules or the Inheritance Certificate.
Insurance and trusts are closed for the same reason. A nomination under the Insurance Act 1966 is an arrangement between the policy owner and the insurer: a trust nomination under section 132, made in favour of a spouse or children, creates a trust of the policy moneys so that under section 132(4) they do not form part of the estate and are not subject to the policy owner's debts; a revocable nomination under section 133 may be revoked by the policy owner at any time. Neither is recorded in any public register, and nothing obliges anyone to tell a nominee that he has been named. Singapore likewise keeps no public register of trusts. A father who says everything is in a trust is therefore making a statement that cannot be verified from outside — which is not the same as a statement that is false, and the distinction is worth holding onto.
What the four checks actually tell you
Read the four results together. If the Business Profile shows him as the sole member of the operating company at eighty-four with no holding company above it; if the People Profile turns up no other vehicles; if the Wills Registry returns nothing; and if the Public Guardian's register shows no Lasting Power of Attorney, then it is all arranged describes an intention rather than an instrument, and the family is exposed to exactly the sequence the case files on this site document. If instead there is a holding company with several members, a will record deposited by a named firm, a registered LPA and a title held in a structure rather than a personal name, then somebody has done real work, and the remaining unknowns are the contents — which were never going to be yours to read.
None of these searches requires his permission, his knowledge or a lawyer, and every one of them is something a bank, an auditor or a counterparty would run as a matter of routine before doing business. But they answer only whether structure exists, never what it says. That is precisely why they are worth doing before the conversation rather than instead of it: they tell you which question is still open. See the page on how to ask about inheritance without looking greedy for the five questions that remain answerable once you know what the record already shows.