When stomach cancer struck her husband last year, Mrs Toh Boon Keng was able to act quickly. Her husband, Mr Toh Kok Siong, 80, had developed dementia after years of Parkinson’s disease and could no longer make decisions for his own care.

A Lasting Power Of Attorney (LPA) he made in 2015 named Mrs Toh and their eldest son Ian as donees. This means the family could consent to his treatment and access his funds for his care.

“With the LPA in place, I was able to give consent for this operation, and Ian helped handle the banking matters,” says Mrs Toh.

The mother and son made their decisions after discussing with members of their extended family.

“My husband has nephews and nieces who are doctors and medical professors so I consulted them, and one of them went with me to see his oncologist,” says Mrs Toh.

With clear legal arrangements in place and support from extended family, she was able to navigate complex medical and financial decisions with confidence.

For many other Singapore families in similar situations, events can unfold very differently without an LPA in place.

Ian, 41, recalls a friend whose mother became mentally incapacitated after a sudden illness. Without an LPA, he could not access her bank accounts or help to pay her bills.

Such situations are not uncommon, says Dr Jackie Lam, a family physician and co-founder of Keystone Clinic & Surgery, who regularly sees families struggling with caregiving and legal decisions.

When Dr Lam was a junior doctor on neurosurgery rotation, he once treated a patient in his 40s who became comatose after a sudden brain bleed.

The patient was the sole breadwinner for his family but without an LPA, his wife could not access his bank accounts to pay for their daily living and their young children’s schooling needs.

“She could not understand why she as the wife could not make certain decisions o...