I am my special-needs child's deputy. Now what?

Even while being her deputy, I mustn't forget to be her parent

- Jill Lim

In February, I wrote about how I had submitted an application to be a court-appointed deputy for my daughter with autism, Kate, with my husband as a second deputy.

As Kate is 21 in 2025, she is legally an adult, but lacks the mental capability or awareness to make financial and medical decisions. With deputyship, my husband and I will have the proper authority to make those decisions for her.

For a nervous month after the submission, there was no contact from the court. And then an e-mail came from the Family Justice Court. "Yessss!" I crowed exuberantly when I saw the sender.

Unfortunately, my triumph was premature. The e-mail said that a district judge had reviewed the application and required clarifications and/or documents.

Embarrassingly, there were about 11 areas where I had omitted information, including the hanyu pinyin version of my Chinese name, which appears in brackets on my identity card, but which I often don't include. (Reminder for future applications: Take the words "as per NRIC" seriously for legal documents.)

I replied within the three-week period I was given, addressing the queries and uploading the missing documents, which included a copy of my husband's NRIC and the page from Kate's POSB bank book showing the latest bank balance.

Some 10 weeks after I had first submitted my application, the court order appointing us as deputies was granted and e-mailed to us as a password-protected document.

WHERE ARE THE DOORS?

My first emotion was relief, relief that I had navigated the system and settled that bit of important paperwork.

I was also appreciative of the official help I had received, free, first from an executive of Future Care Planning Services of Minds, who had advised me on deputyship and the Assisted Deputyship Application Programme. And also from the Family Justice Court itself, which had made it easy for me to fix my errors. I just had to reply to the queries by e-mail.