How do I find out what is in my father's will?

While he lives: no right to contents — but readiness is askable

The privacy is not a slight against you; it is the design of the instrument. A will speaks only at death and can be rewritten until then, so the law treats its contents as nobody's business but the testator's — children, spouses, and named beneficiaries included. Pressing to see it is both futile and corrosive, and any adviser who leaked it would be breaching his duty to your father, not doing you a favour.

What the family can legitimately establish is preparedness: does a will exist, is it current, who is the executor, where is the original held, is there a Lasting Power of Attorney. These are questions about whether the family would function in a crisis, not about who gets what — which is why a father who will not discuss contents will often still answer them, and why every serious adviser encourages him to. Wanting clarity about the machinery is stewardship, not greed; the contents can remain his alone.

The Wills Registry: what it records, and who may look

Singapore keeps a Wills Registry, run by the Singapore Academy of Law since it took the service over from the Public Trustee's Office on 4 May 2020. It is voluntary and deliberately narrow: it stores details of the testator, the date of the will, who drew it up, and where the original is held. It does not keep the original signed will; a digital copy is held only for deposits made through participating law firms. Registering neither validates a will nor does failing to register invalidate one; the registry exists so that a will made quietly in 2009 is not lost quietly in 2026.

Access follows the same logic as the will's privacy. During the testator's lifetime, the information is available to the testator and the lawyers acting for him. After death, a family member or the estate's lawyers may search online with the testator's identification number, a declared relationship and supporting documents, the death certificate among them; each search costs S$10, and the result is emailed within three to five working days (SAL search guide, 15 August 2023). An empty result is not proof there is no will, since unregistered wills are common; an entry ends the drawer-by-drawer hunt in the family's worst week.

After death: probate opens the record — and what if nothing is found

Death inverts the privacy. The executor must produce the will to obtain a Grant of Probate from the Family Justice Courts, and once it is lodged, the will is part of the court record. A certified copy can be requested from the courts, so a beneficiary, or a family member left out, is no longer dependent on the executor's goodwill to learn what it says. Executors have no legal deadline for a formal 'reading of the will,' a ceremony that exists mainly in films, but they cannot administer the estate while keeping its instructions secret from the court.

If no will can be found, the estate is administered as an intestacy under the Intestate Succession Act — spouse and children in statutory shares, whatever anyone believes the deceased intended. And where a will is known to have existed but the original was last in the testator's own keeping and cannot be found, the law's starting presumption is that he destroyed it intending to revoke it — a presumption that can be rebutted with evidence, but an ugly fight to have. That is the practical case for the two questions worth asking while he is alive: not 'what does it say,' but 'does it exist, and where is it.'

A will held back after death can be ordered into court, and copied from the court file

After a death, the original may sit with an executor, a sibling or a lawyer who simply does not produce it. The law gives the family a lever for that. Section 54 of the Probate and Administration Act 1934 lets the court, on the application of any person interested, order anyone believed to possess or control a will, or to know of its existence, to produce it at the registry within a named time, or to attend court and be examined about it. The application goes to a Judge and must be served on that person (Family Justice (Probate and Other Matters) Rules 2024, Part 6, rule 42).

Once the will is in the Registry, it stops being anyone's private paper to show or withhold. Rule 44 of Part 6, in force since 15 October 2024, provides that a copy of the whole or any part of a will deposited there may be obtained on payment of the prescribed fee, as photographic copies certified by the Registrar and sealed with the court's seal. The original stays put: rule 45 bars its removal or inspection without the Registrar's order, and any inspection happens before a court officer.

The Family Justice Courts' guidance, updated 1 June 2026, puts certified true copies of the grant, the Schedule of Assets and the will at about S$50 for five pages; a lawyer files the request through eLitigation, an applicant without one files at the Service Bureau, and the request must state its reason. If only a photocopy or a draft survives, rule 43 allows an application to admit it to proof, on affidavit evidence of due execution, of facts rebutting the presumption of revocation described above, and of the copy's accuracy.