What's the best way to settle my late dad's estate?

Long qn Hi guys, my dad passed on couple of months ago (no will) and we finally gotten the Letter Of Administrator. My Sis is now the administrator. 2 questions on my end, 1) we were told to open an estate bank account under his name to deposit the monies from cheques, etc. But we can't seem to find any details online, anyone has any experience of doing so? 2) There are a number of financial institutions involved, do we need to make a trip to every single one physically to extract the money? Or is there a better and more efficient way?

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Eric Chia

30 Aug 2018

Senior Financial Consultant at Prudential

Sorry to hear about your loss. My dad passed on a couple of years back. He didn’t leave much behind except for his CPF, which (thankfully) he made a nomination and it was distributed accordingly to his wishes.

As he didn’t have much in his savings and possessions, we got his money from the bank with my mom’s IC and their marriage cert. HDB side ownership transfer also settled smoothly without issues. Think he is looking after us from above. Hope this info helps!

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Kenneth Lou

30 Aug 2018

Co-founder at Seedly

From Bea Tang, a fellow Community member:

"The estate bank account is intended to be a temporary account until the administrator has distributed all your dad’s assets including the shares (which may be sold or transferred to the beneficiaries). You’re right - there is no info online for any of this unfortunately. I had to find out the hard way.

Most banks will open an estate account with the letters of administration. But from my experience only OCBC provides Internet Banking facilities for estate accounts. Or you can convert his existing account into an estate account (the name of the account will just be changed to “Estate of <>”). Either way this requires a personal trip to the bank by the administrator.

You should also convert your dad’s CDP account into an estate account. This requires a personal trip by the administrator to CDP. Make an appointment online for this saves you alot of waiting. Then link the CDP estate account to the estate bank account so that dividends and sale proceeds will be credited directly without having to deal with cheques.

You’ll also need to convert your dad’s brokerage account into an estate account to sell his shares. And no brokerage firm offers internet trading for estate accounts. This means that full commission fees will be charged unfortunately. And no e-statements either. You can only sell (and not buy) through the estate brokerage account."

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