What Is a Letter of Wishes and Why Most People May Need It More Than a Will

Picture this. Your mother has had a stroke. She's in hospital, conscious but unable to speak. She has a will. She even has a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) in place, meaning she appointed a trusted person to make decisions on her behalf if she ever lost mental capacity.

But now your family is standing around her bed, trying to figure out what she would actually want.

Does she want every possible medical intervention, or would she prefer comfort over aggressive treatment? She mentioned once she hated hospitals. Does that mean something now? She was particular about her appearance her whole life. Will anyone know to make sure she's kept clean and dressed with care?

Nobody thinks about asking these questions until a crisis forces the conversation. And because she never wrote any of it down, the people who love her most are left guessing at the worst possible time.

This is the gap that a Letter of Wishes is designed to fill.

What Is a Letter of Wishes?

A Letter of Wishes (LOW) is a non-legally binding document where you record your preferences, values, and intentions in your own words. It is not a will. It is not an LPA. It sits alongside those documents and helps fill the personal and practical gaps they often leave behind: the why behind your decisions, the how behind your care, and the things only you would know to mention.

Because it is not legally binding, a Letter of Wishes gives you the freedom to explain your values, preferences, reasoning, and personal guidance, without the formality, complexity, or cost of trying to fit every personal detail into a legal document. And because it is not set in stone, you can update it whenever your circumstances or preferences change.

A LOW can cover three areas most people never properly plan for:

• If you lose mental capacity

  How you want to be cared for, medically and personally, if you can no longer communicate.

  
  

• End of life

  Your wishes around medical intervention, funeral arrangements, and what should happen after.

  
  

• Legacy

  Messages for the people you love, the reasoning behind your decisions, and what you want them to know.

  
  

Why a Will and LPA Are Not Enough On Their Own

A comprehensive will, LPA, and healthcare planning documents such as an Advance Care Plan (ACP) or Advance Medical Directive (AMD) form the legal and practical backbone of any solid estate plan. Done well, they are essential. But even the most thorough legal and healthcare documents have a ceiling on what they can express.

A will tells people what should happen to your assets after death. An LPA gives someone the legal authority to make decisions on your behalf if you lose mental capacity. An ACP helps record your preferences for future medical care if you become unable to communicate them yourself, while an AMD specifically relates to extraordinary life-sustaining treatment in terminal illness situations.

But none of these documents are really designed to answer the deeply personal questions that arise in real life.

Who should care for your ageing pet if something happens to you? Would you prefer to remain at home for as long as possible instead of moving into institutional care? If your children inherit money young, what values or guidance would you want them to receive alongside it? If family members disagree about your care, what principles would you want decisions anchored around? What comforts, routines, relationships, religious practices, or personal boundaries matter most to you when you are vulnerable?

These are not usually legal questions. They are human ones.

Even when formal documents are comprehensive, they often cannot fully capture the personal context, preferences, routines, values, and trade-offs that shape how decisions should be carried out in real life.

And real life is rarely black and white.

Families, caregivers, doctors, donees, deputies, and executors are often forced to navigate grey areas: balancing independence against safety, quality of life against longevity, family expectations against personal wishes, or financial practicality against emotional significance. Formal documents can provide authority and structure, but they cannot anticipate every situation or interpret every nuance on your behalf.

That is the role of a Letter of Wishes - to help guide the people making decisions for you when the answers are not obvious. Not just by telling them what you wanted, but by helping them understand your values, priorities, boundaries, and the reasoning behind your wishes.

What Are the Limitations of a Letter of Wishes?

A Letter of Wishes is a powerful planning tool, but it is important to understand what it cannot do.

Because it is not legally binding, it depends significantly on the people around you caring about and acting on your preferences. If you are in the care of someone who does not respect your wishes, a LOW alone cannot force compliance. It has no legal teeth.

This means a LOW works best when it sits alongside trusted people in your life: family members, close friends, or appointed professionals who genuinely have your interests at heart.

If you have concerns about whether anyone in your life will honour your preferences, or if you do not have a trusted person to take on that responsibility, you may want to consider engaging professional services such as a professional donee, in addition to writing your wishes down.

A Letter of Wishes is a record of your intentions. Making sure those intentions are carried out is a matter of who you trust, and how you set up your broader plan.

Myths vs Facts About Letters of Wishes

Myth: A Letter of Wishes is only relevant when you die.

Fact: Some of its most critical content, specifically your care instructions and personal preferences, applies while you are still alive but mentally incapacitated.

Myth: It is not worth writing because it is not legally binding.

Fact: Because it is not constrained by legal drafting requirements, a Letter of Wishes gives you more room to express personal preferences, reasoning, values, and practical guidance in your own words. You can be specific, personal, and direct in ways a formal legal document cannot accommodate. It is not a replacement for legal documents. It is the layer that makes those documents work better in practice.

Myth: I can just tell my family verbally.

Fact: What you say in conversation gets filtered through memory, emotion, and interpretation. Written instructions remove ambiguity. In a crisis, memory and emotion can distort what was actually said and heard.

Myth: I need a lawyer to write one.

Fact: You do not. A Letter of Wishes requires no legal professional and no formal process. What it requires is thought, honesty, and a structured place to put it all. That said, many lawyers and other professionals do offer Letters of Wishes as part of their services, which leads to a common problem discussed below.

The Problem With Having Multiple Letters of Wishes

Letters of Wishes are not new. Many professionals already use them. A trust arrangement often comes with one. A will may be accompanied by one. Some solicitors prepare them as part of estate planning. An ACP, while distinct from a traditional Letter of Wishes, serves a similar purpose within the healthcare context by helping communicate a person’s care preferences.

So the issue most people face is not that they have no Letter of Wishes. It is that they have several, created at different times, with different professionals, for different purposes, and held in different places.

Each was written to serve a specific arrangement. Each may have been updated independently, or not updated at all. Over time, they can fall out of sync with each other and with what you actually want now. In a crisis, the people responsible for helping you may each be working from a different version of your preferences, without knowing the others exist.

The stronger approach is to maintain one central, personally owned record of your wishes that you control and keep current. Relevant sections can be shared with the appropriate professionals and family members as needed, so everyone is working from the same foundation. When you update it, the people you have authorised see the latest version. You say it once. The right people receive what is relevant to them.

This is what Immortalize's Letter of Wishes is designed to be: not a replacement for the guidance your professionals already hold, but the single source that keeps everything consistent.

How Immortalize's Letter of Wishes Works

Immortalize's Letter of Wishes generator is built around exactly this principle: one complete document, shared smartly.

• Write once. Share selectively. 

  Your solicitor receives only the sections relevant to your will. Your doctor gets your medical preferences. Your caregivers get your care instructions. Everyone gets what they need, nothing more.

  
  

• Always current. 

  When you update your LOW, everyone you have given access to automatically has the latest version. No printing, no re-sending, no chasing.

  
  

• Guided from start to finish. 

  The generator walks you through everything with simple questions and ready-made options. Most people already know what matters to them. The challenge is organising those thoughts clearly before a crisis forces others to guess.

  
  

• Connected to your full plan through YEPPA. 

  YEPPA is Immortalize's built-in digital concierge. As you complete your LOW, YEPPA automatically links it to your Schedule of Assets, your Connections, and your Elderhood Checklist, keeping your entire plan organised and in sync.

  
  

• Saves you money on professional time. 

  When you arrive at a lawyer, doctor, or financial adviser already knowing what you want, you spend their time on real decisions. Fewer meetings, fewer revisions, lower costs.

When Should You Write Yours?

Now. Before you need it.

Most people wait for a trigger: a health scare, a parent's death, a significant birthday. By then, decisions are being made under pressure, with less clarity and more emotion.

There is a practical reason to start early too. If you write your Letter of Wishes before meeting a lawyer, doctor, or financial adviser, you walk into those appointments already knowing what you want. You spend their time on decisions, not on figuring out your preferences in real time. Fewer meetings. Fewer revisions. Lower costs.

If you have already completed your will or LPA, your Letter of Wishes adds the missing layer: the context, the reasoning, and the personal instructions that give the people you have appointed the confidence to act on your behalf clearly.

Action Steps

1. Start today, even with one section. You do not need to complete your LOW in one sitting. Pick the area most urgent to you, whether that is care preferences, messages for your children, or funeral wishes, and begin there.

   
   

2. Tell someone it exists. A Letter of Wishes is only useful if the right people can find it. Use Immortalize's Connections feature to assign access to the people responsible for different parts of your plan.

   
   

3. Review it once a year. Set a reminder on your birthday or at the new year. Your preferences will evolve. Your LOW should too.

   
   

4. Use it before your next professional appointment. If you are seeing a lawyer, doctor, or financial adviser about any aspect of your future, bring your LOW with you. It will make every conversation more focused and more useful.

   
   

One Letter. Everything It Takes to Be Understood.

Your family will not know what they do not know. And they will not think to ask the questions they do not know to ask.

A Letter of Wishes is how you answer those questions before they become a crisis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is a Letter of Wishes legally binding in Singapore?

A: No, a Letter of Wishes is not a legally enforceable document. Its value lies in the personal guidance it gives to the people acting on your behalf, not in legal compulsion. If you need certain preferences to be legally protected, speak to a lawyer about incorporating them into your will, LPA, trust or other legal instruments instead.

Q: What is the difference between a Letter of Wishes and an Advance Care Plan (ACP)?

A: An Advance Care Plan is a specific document used within Singapore's healthcare system to record your medical care preferences. A Letter of Wishes is broader and more personal. It covers care instructions, legacy messages, financial guidance, funeral preferences, and more, and is not limited to the medical setting.

Q: Can I write a Letter of Wishes without a lawyer?

A: Yes. No legal professional is required to write a Letter of Wishes. You can write it yourself, or use Immortalize's Letter of Wishes generator, which walks you through every section with structured prompts. That said, once written, it is strongly recommended that you share your LOW with the people responsible for carrying out your wishes and go through it with them directly. This gives them a chance to ask questions and clarify anything they are unsure about while you are still able to explain your intentions, reducing the risk of misinterpretation when it matters most.

Q: What should a Letter of Wishes include?

A: At minimum, it should cover your personal care preferences if you lose mental capacity, your wishes around end-of-life medical decisions, your funeral preferences, context around important estate decisions, and any personal messages for loved ones or dependents.

Q: What if the people responsible for me don't follow my Letter of Wishes?

A: Because a LOW is not legally binding, it cannot compel anyone to act on your preferences. It works best when paired with people you genuinely trust, whether family, friends, or appointed professionals. If you have concerns about this, consider whether a professional donee, professional executor, or trust arrangement might provide the additional safeguards you need.

Q: When should I update my Letter of Wishes?

A: Any time your circumstances change significantly, such as after a marriage, divorce, new child, major health change, or a shift in your financial situation. A good habit is to review it at least once a year.

This article is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, medical, or financial advice. Where appropriate, seek advice from qualified professionals regarding your specific circumstances.