My father refuses to discuss succession. Where do we start?

Why the direct approach fails

In most of the families this site covers, raising wills reads as raising death — and raising death reads as disloyalty or greed. The refusal is cultural, not personal. Pushing harder on the same door produces the silence every disputed estate in our case files shares: everything stayed in the founder's head until probate said it out loud.

The window has a closing date

The reason to open this now, rather than when it feels less awkward, is that the founder's ability to decide anything expires before he does. The Lim Por-yen judgment sets out the sequence with unusual clarity: a neurologist recorded a Mini-Mental State Examination score of 8 out of 30 on 2 August 2004 and assessed moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease; a new will disinheriting one of the four households was signed on 3 December 2004; the Court of First Instance held on 11 April 2025 that there had been neither testamentary capacity nor knowledge and approval, and pronounced instead a manuscript will the founder had written in 1973. Between the score and the judgment lie twenty years and a 26-day trial.

Singapore closes that door harder, not softer. Under the Mental Capacity Act 2008, section 23(1)(k), a will for someone who has lost capacity can only be executed by the Court, and section 23(1)(h) says the same of settling that person's property on trust. No deputy, no donee under a Lasting Power of Attorney, and no group of beneficiaries can do it. Which is the practical case for the earlier conversation: the instruments a family can still choose freely are the ones signed while nobody would think to question the signature.

A signature made quietly can be reopened ten years later

Doing the paperwork is not the same as having the conversation, and a Singapore judgment of June 2026 shows the difference. In YET v YEU [2026] SGHCF 18, decided by Justice Kwek Mean Luck on 4 June 2026, a father executed a Lasting Power of Attorney on 19 January 2016 naming two of his sons as co-donees. On 12 May 2015 he had signed a handwritten note leaving his property to one of them. That son says that between 25 June 2014 and 18 January 2016 his father gave him, or let him use, money in their joint accounts. Their mother testified the father loved him most of four children.

The other brother sued in November 2023. The Family Court suspended the first son's powers as donee and stopped his withdrawals until the case is decided. In May 2025 the challenge widened to whether the father had capacity to sign the power at all. The High Court held that the Family Court cannot decide whether the transfers were gifts; that needs a civil action. But the allegations stay in the record, because a donor's awareness of his own finances bears on his capacity, and the certifying doctor may be questioned on it. Nothing about the facts has yet been decided.

The family went through the right door and still ended up in court. What was missing, on the record, was the rest of the conversation: a note to one son, joint accounts with one son, and gifts the other children learned about later. Our reading, which is inference and not the court's: gifts to one child, written down while the father is plainly well and told to the others, are much harder to reopen ten years later. Section 17 of the Mental Capacity Act 2008 lets the court revoke a power or a donee's appointment; the conversation is what keeps a family out of that section.

A sequence that works

One: the incapacity question — 'who signs if you are in hospital for a month' — is operational, answerable, and legitimizes everything that follows. In Singapore its formal instrument is the Lasting Power of Attorney; every jurisdiction we cover has an equivalent.

Two: the key-person audit — which licenses, credit lines, and relationships exist only in the founder's name. This surfaces the untransferable capital while the founder can still transfer it.

Three: only then, the documents — will, nominations, structures. By this point the conversation is about continuity of the business, which is a subject a builder will discuss with pride rather than dread.

What an heir may legitimately ask

You are not entitled to read the will. You are entitled to ask whether one exists, where it is held, and who the executor is — questions about the family's preparedness, not its contents. Wanting clarity about your position is stewardship, not greed; every adviser worth the name will tell the founder the same.