A CPF nomination takes about ten minutes and costs nothing, and it decides where a sum that is, for many Singaporeans, one of their largest assets actually goes. Without one, your CPF savings don’t follow your will: they go to the Public Trustee for distribution under the intestacy rules. And one common life event, marriage, wipes out any nomination you already made.
I’m Wahab. I run A.W. Law LLC in Chinatown, and in wills and estate planning work, the CPF nomination is the single highest-value-per-minute step I can recommend. This post explains what it does, what it can’t do, and where it fits with your will.
What a nomination covers, and what it doesn’t
A CPF nomination operates outside your estate. Nominated savings pass directly to your nominees, without a grant of probate and without reference to your will.
| Covered by your nomination | Not covered |
|---|---|
| Ordinary Account, Special Account, Retirement Account, MediSave | Property bought with CPF savings |
| Remaining CPF LIFE premium balance | Dependants’ Protection Scheme (DPS) payouts |
| Discounted Singtel shares under the Special Discounted Shares Scheme | Investments under the CPF Investment Scheme |
The right-hand column is where the misunderstandings live, and the property line is the big one. Many people assume that because CPF paid for their flat, the CPF nomination deals with the flat. It doesn’t. Property passes according to how it is held, joint tenancy or tenancy-in-common, and then under your will or the intestacy rules. Our post on what happens to an HDB flat when the owner dies covers that separately, and the CPF Board’s own page on what your nomination covers sets out the boundaries.
Making one: the ten-minute version
- Log in to the CPF website or app with Singpass and open the nomination service.
- Name your nominees and the share each receives. Shares should total 100%.
- Submit. Making a nomination is free, and your nominees pay nothing to claim.
- Diarise a review. Any major life event is a prompt to check it.
If you’d rather see the official walkthrough first, CPF’s making a CPF nomination page has it.
The two traps
Marriage revokes your nomination. Automatically, by operation of law. From the wedding day until you make a new one, you have no nomination at all, and your CPF savings would go to the Public Trustee under the intestacy rules. Newly married couples are exactly the people who assume their affairs are in order, which is what makes this trap effective.
Divorce does not revoke it. The mirror image, and the more painful one. An ex-spouse named as your nominee remains your nominee until you change it, however final the divorce. I raise this at the end of every divorce matter I handle, alongside the will, because the divorce itself changes nothing here. Our post on what happens to your CPF in a divorce covers the division side; this is the death side, and both need attention.
Without a nomination
If you die with no valid nomination, the savings go to the Public Trustee’s Office, which distributes them under the intestacy rules: fixed statutory shares, not your wishes. For Muslim members, distribution follows faraid, which our guide to faraid and Muslim inheritance explains in full.
That route works, but it is slower, it may attract administration fees, and it hands the outcome to a formula. Our post on dying without a will in Singapore shows what those fixed shares look like in practice.
How the nomination fits your will
The pieces of a Singapore estate plan sit in separate boxes, and a good plan makes them agree:
- CPF nomination: your CPF savings.
- Insurance nominations: policy proceeds.
- How assets are held: joint tenancy passes by survivorship, outside the will entirely. See our post on joint bank accounts on death.
- Your will: everything else.
The failure I see most often isn’t a badly drafted will; it’s a perfectly good will that governs a fraction of what the person owned, because the largest assets were nominated or jointly held. Reviewing all four boxes together is the actual estate planning work.
What to do next
Do the CPF nomination this week; it’s free, online, and takes ten minutes. Then check whether it still says what you want after any marriage, divorce, birth, or death in the family.
If you’d like the whole picture reviewed, will, nominations, property holding, and CPF together, the first ten minutes with me are free. Book a Wills & Probate Discovery Session, in English, Malay, or Tamil.
