How to leave money to your special-needs child in Singapore

Why leaving money directly can backfire

Most of us picture providing for a child as leaving them money. For a child who will always need help managing it, that instinct can quietly work against them.

An adult who cannot make financial decisions for themselves cannot legally receive and manage a sum of money on their own. So money that lands directly in their name — through a will, a CPF nomination, an insurance payout — may need a court-appointed deputy before anyone can touch it for their benefit. The money is theirs, and no one can yet use it for them.

The point of a plan is not to leave more. It is to make sure what you leave arrives somewhere that can actually be spent on your child’s care, month after month, by someone allowed to do it.

The four pieces of a money plan

There is no single product that does this. It is a handful of pieces that each solve one part of the problem, and fit together into what we think of as the money map.

1. A will that points to a trust

A will decides where your estate goes. The move that matters here is directing your child’s share into a trust set up for them, rather than to your child by name. That one choice is what keeps an inheritance from becoming a lump sum nobody can legally manage. How to word it is worth a lawyer’s time — but knowing the destination is the trust, before you sit down to write it, is most of the battle.

2. The Special Needs Trust

The Special Needs Trust, run by the Special Needs Trust Company, is the place money can arrive and be held. It pays out for your child’s care under professional administration, at government-subsidised fees, and — crucially — it can begin paying out after you are gone without waiting on a court. It is the destination the other three pieces point toward. Setting one up starts from S$5,000, and our full guide to the trust walks through the fees and how it works.

3. The Special Needs Savings Scheme, for your CPF

Your CPF savings are a large part of what most families have to leave, and an ordinary CPF nomination pays them out as a lump sum. The Special Needs Savings Scheme (SNSS) exists precisely so that does not happen to a child who cannot manage a lump sum. It lets you set aside CPF savings to be paid to your child in monthly amounts after you die — a minimum of S$250 a month, for at least a year.

Your child qualifies if they attend or attended a SPED school, or need help with at least one of the six activities of daily living. You arrange it through SNTC first — they issue the eligibility letter — then complete it at a CPF Service Centre.

4. Your other nominations

The same principle runs through everything else you might leave: insurance policies, bank savings, other accounts. The aim is for each to arrive somewhere that can manage it for your child — for many families, that means directing it to the trust rather than to the child by name. Exactly how to structure each one is worth professional advice, but the question to bring to that conversation is simple: where does this land, and can someone legally spend it on my child there?

How the pieces fit together

Read down the last column and the shape is clear: nothing lands directly on a child who cannot manage it. It arrives at the trust, or as steady monthly support — money someone is allowed to spend on their behalf.

A sensible order to set it up

You do not need all of this in place tomorrow. If you are starting from nothing, this is an order that builds real protection early without waiting on the whole plan.

1. Write a simple will, if you have none. Even a basic one that directs your child’s share into a trust is a large step up from nothing. This is the piece that protects your estate the moment it exists.
2. Talk to SNTC about a trust. They are set up for exactly this and the fees are subsidised. The trust is the destination everything else points to, so it is worth opening the conversation early.
3. Set up SNSS for your CPF. Get the eligibility letter from SNTC, then complete it at a CPF Service Centre. This converts the single biggest lump sum most families leave into monthly support.
4. Review your nominations. Check where your insurance and bank accounts currently pay out, and speak to a professional about redirecting them to the trust.
5. Sort out legal authority in parallel. If your child is near or past 21, the authority to act for them is a separate task — our guides to deputyship and to what changes at 21 cover it.

What it costs, roughly

Less than most people fear. A Special Needs Trust starts from S$5,000, and its running fees are heavily subsidised — the figures are in our trust guide. SNSS costs nothing to set up beyond moving your own CPF savings. A will drawn up by a lawyer is a modest one-off. The expensive path is the one you fall into by not planning: money frozen behind a court application because it landed in the wrong place. Figures are as of July 2026.