Your CPF savings are not covered by your will. They do not form part of your estate, and no clause in a will can direct where they go. CPF monies are distributed according to the CPF nomination you made with the CPF Board. If you never made one, they are transferred to the Public Trustee, who distributes them according to intestacy law.
For most people in Singapore, CPF is one of the largest things they own. It is also the one most often left out of estate planning, because the natural assumption is that a will covers everything. It does not.
Nomination beats will, every time
If your will leaves everything to your children and your CPF nomination still names your former spouse, the CPF money goes to your former spouse. The two documents operate in separate systems, and the nomination governs the CPF savings.
This catches people out constantly, usually because the nomination was made when they first started working and never looked at again. Nothing prompts you to review it. It sits there quietly doing exactly what you told it to do a decade ago.
What a nomination covers, and what it does not
A CPF nomination deals with your CPF savings and certain CPF-related holdings on your death. It does not deal with everything you own, and it certainly does not cover your home.
| Asset | Passes by |
|---|---|
| CPF savings in your accounts | CPF nomination; Public Trustee and intestacy law if none |
| HDB flat or private property held in joint tenancy | Survivorship: automatically to the surviving joint owner |
| Property held as tenants-in-common | Your will, or the intestacy rules if there is no will |
| Sole-name bank accounts and investments | Your will, or the intestacy rules |
| Insurance proceeds with a valid nomination | The policy nomination, to the nominee |
The property point is the one worth pausing on. Even if CPF savings were used to pay for a flat, the flat itself is not distributed by your CPF nomination. Where a flat is held in joint tenancy, the surviving owner takes it by survivorship regardless of what your will says. Our guide to what happens to an HDB flat in a divorce explains how the manner of holding works and why it matters.
If you never made a nomination
Nothing is lost, but the process becomes slower and the outcome is out of your hands. The CPF Board transfers the savings to the Public Trustee, who distributes them to your family according to intestacy law.
For non-Muslims that means the Intestate Succession Act 1967, which sets fixed shares. For example, a surviving spouse and children take one half and one half respectively, with the children sharing their half equally. For Muslims domiciled in Singapore, distribution follows faraid, the Islamic law of inheritance, with the Syariah Court issuing an inheritance certificate setting out the heirs and shares.
Either way your family has to deal with an additional agency at a difficult time, and the money is divided by formula rather than by your intentions. The Public Trustee may also charge for administering the distribution, so check current arrangements with the CPF Board and the Ministry of Law rather than relying on any figure you read secondhand.
Making or changing a nomination
Nominations are made directly with the CPF Board, not through a lawyer and not in your will. Current forms, eligibility conditions and the online process are on cpf.gov.sg, accessible with Singpass, and that is the authoritative source, because requirements and options change over time.
Things to have decided before you start:
- Who the nominees are, in full legal name and identification number.
- The proportion each receives, since nominations are usually expressed in shares.
- What happens if a nominee is a minor, as arrangements exist for holding a child’s share until they come of age.
- Whether your circumstances have changed since the last nomination. This is the whole reason you are checking.
Keep a note that you have made one, and tell your executor. They cannot administer what they do not know exists.
Marriage revokes it. Divorce does not.
This is the pattern that runs through Singapore estate law and it is worth stating plainly.
Marriage revokes an existing CPF nomination. If you nominated your parents before you married, that nomination is gone once you marry, and unless you make a new one your CPF falls into the no-nomination default.
Divorce does not revoke a CPF nomination. A former spouse named as nominee stays named until you change it yourself. The court order in your divorce does not touch it. Neither does the final judgment.
The same asymmetry applies to wills (marriage revokes a will, divorce does not), which is why the two jobs belong on one list. If you are working through a separation, our guide to how CPF is treated in a divorce deals with the division of CPF monies between spouses, which is a completely separate question from what happens on death. Both need attention.
Where CPF sits in a full estate plan
Think of your assets as travelling down separate channels, each with its own paperwork:
- CPF savings: CPF nomination.
- Insurance proceeds: policy nomination with the insurer.
- Jointly held property: survivorship, decided by the manner of holding.
- Everything else in your sole name: your will, or the intestacy rules if you have none.
- Decisions while you are alive but lack capacity: a lasting power of attorney.
Sorting out only one channel leaves the rest on default settings. The full list is in our estate planning checklist, and the broader guide to wills and probate explains what your family will need to do when the time comes.
A five-minute review
Log in to cpf.gov.sg and check who is currently nominated and in what shares. Then check your insurance nominations with each insurer, confirm how your property is held, and confirm your will still names the people you would choose. If any of them predates a marriage, divorce, birth or death in the family, it is almost certainly wrong.
None of this takes long. It is only forgotten because nothing ever reminds you, and by the time it matters, you are not there to fix it.
