Who can sign for my father while he is in hospital?
Nobody, automatically — not his wife, not the eldest son, not the company secretary. Singapore law starts from the opposite assumption: under the Mental Capacity Act 2008, section 3(2), a person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks it, so while your father is presumed capable, only his own signature works. Once capacity is genuinely gone, authority exists only where he created it in advance, in a Lasting Power of Attorney registered with the Office of the Public Guardian. Without one, the family applies to the Family Justice Courts for a deputy: the simplified process is usually completed in four to six weeks, the standard process in three to four months (Singapore Courts, page updated 17 March 2026). Neither instrument lets anyone sign for the company.
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The default is nobody, and that is the design
Hospitals, banks, registries and transfer agents do not act on family standing. They act on documents, and Singapore law makes the starting document his own. The Mental Capacity Act 2008 sets out the principles in section 3: a person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks it; he is not to be treated as unable to decide unless all practicable steps to help him have been tried without success; and he is not to be treated as unable to decide merely because the decision is unwise. So the useful question in the first week is never who is closest to his bedside. It is what he signed, and whether it is registered.
That is also what separates this question from the one families ask alongside it — whether it is too late to make a will or set up a trust after a stroke, which the page on incapacity answers. That page is about what he can still do. This one is about what everyone else can lawfully do while he cannot: pay the school fees, service the mortgage, renew a tenancy, authorise a procedure, sign a board paper. Different instruments, different clocks, and only one of them can still be created after capacity is gone.
If a Lasting Power of Attorney exists: what the donee can and cannot do
Section 11 of the Act defines the instrument: the donor confers on one or more donees authority to decide about his personal welfare, or his property and affairs, or both, when he no longer has capacity to decide for himself. A donee must be at least 21, and an undischarged bankrupt cannot be a donee for property and affairs (section 12). The Office of the Public Guardian offers two forms — Form 1 for general powers with basic restrictions, Form 2 for customised powers whose clauses must be drafted by a Singapore solicitor. OPG states that 98 per cent of Singapore citizens who have made an LPA used Form 1. On the current fees table, Form 1 costs nothing for Singapore citizens, $30 for permanent residents and $160 for foreigners; Form 2 costs $30 for citizens and permanent residents and $160 for foreigners.
The fee position is where most published guidance is now stale. Form 1 became free for Singapore citizens from 1 April 2026, and fees for all other Form 1 and Form 2 applications were reduced from 1 May 2026 (OPG page updated 2 April 2026). There is therefore no longer a waiver with an expiry date to race — the waiver was replaced by a revised schedule. Certificate issuer fees remain separate and privately charged, whatever the applicant's nationality.
The limits matter as much as the powers. A donee may only act where the donor lacks capacity, or the donee reasonably believes he does (section 13(1)). Gifts of the donor's property require express authorisation in the instrument (section 14). A donee for property and affairs may not make or revoke an insurance nomination under sections 132 or 133 of the Insurance Act 1966, may not execute a CPF memorandum, and may not execute a will for the donor (sections 13(9) and 13(9A)). And section 13(10) is the provision families discover at a bank counter: a person dealing with a donee may require a registered medical practitioner's certificate that the donor's lack of capacity is likely to be permanent, and may refuse to accept the donee's authority if it is not produced.
If there is none: the deputyship route, with its real clock
Where capacity is already gone and no LPA exists, the route is a court application under section 20: the court may make the decision itself, or appoint a deputy to make decisions on the person's behalf. Section 20(4) tells the court to prefer making the decision itself, and to keep any deputy's powers as limited in scope and duration as is reasonably practicable — so a deputyship order is not a general licence to run his affairs. The Family Courts hear all deputyship applications, and a doctor must certify the lack of mental capacity.
The published numbers, from the Singapore Courts deputyship page updated 17 March 2026: the simplified process covers orders including the use of up to an aggregate of $80,000 of the person's funds, with CPF funds subject to a separate limit of $60,000, is usually completed within four to six weeks, and carries estimated court filing fees of $40 to $50. The standard process — used where someone objects, or where the orders sought fall outside that scope — is usually completed within three to four months, with estimated filing fees of $300 to $500. Both figures exclude the doctor's report, affidavit fees, and any lawyer.
Section 25(3) then draws the same lines around a deputy as section 13 draws around a donee: a deputy may not be given power to dispose of the person's property by making gifts, to make or revoke an insurance nomination, to execute or revoke a CPF memorandum, or to execute a will. The practical consequence for a family is that deputyship restores day-to-day administration and nothing else. The instruments that decide who eventually receives what can no longer be changed — which is the whole argument for signing an LPA in an ordinary month rather than an extraordinary one.
The company does not read the LPA
Under the Companies Act 1967, section 157A, the business of a company is to be managed by, or under the direction or supervision of, the directors, and the directors may exercise all the powers of the company except those reserved to the general meeting. Signing authority therefore comes from board resolutions, the constitution and the bank mandate — not from family standing, and not from a Lasting Power of Attorney. Worse, incapacity can subtract rather than transfer: under the model constitution for a private company limited by shares (Companies (Model Constitutions) Regulations 2015, First Schedule), regulation 76(f) provides that the office of director becomes vacant if the director becomes mentally disordered and incapable of managing his affairs. Section 145(2) is to the same effect at the entry point: only a natural person of full legal capacity may be a director.
What does work is boring and available now. Regulation 98 lets a director appoint, with the approval of the board, an alternate or substitute director entitled to notice of board meetings and able to exercise all the powers of the appointer. A board resolution and refreshed bank mandates can name who signs for what, and to what limit, before anyone is ill. At shareholder level the LPA does bite: regulation 60 provides that a member who is mentally disordered may vote through the person who properly has the management of his estate — the donee or the deputy. And section 145(1) requires at least one director ordinarily resident in Singapore at all times, the constraint that catches families whose only resident director is the founder. Constitutions vary; the one to read is the family's own, and it can be read this week.