The contract: what to check before anyone signs
Nearly everything else about hiring a helper in Singapore is a rule imposed on you. The contract is the opposite. Nobody imposes it, there is no official model, and the document in front of you was almost certainly drafted by the company that is being paid to place her.
Singapore prescribes no employment contract for a migrant domestic worker. MOM encourages one and lists six topics to cover, then notes that your agency can draft it for you. She is also outside the Employment Act, so the contract is not sitting on top of a statutory floor. For most households it is the floor.
The document that is mandatory is the safety agreement, signed by you, the agency and her before she starts work, with her copy in her own language.
If you are hiring a Filipina there is a published minimum you have to meet and cannot replace. If you are not, borrow it anyway. It is the only checkable standard in this market written by the side that is not being paid by you.
Most people searching for this type the word maid, so if that is how you found this page, you are in the right place.
What is required, and what is only encouraged
Encouraged. MOM encourages you and your helper to sign an employment contract with mutually agreed terms, and suggests it covers salary, any placement loan, the number of rest days a month, compensation in lieu of a rest day, the notice period, and compensation in lieu of notice. It also says you can ask your employment agency to draft it. (MOM, contracts and safety agreement, page last updated 23 April 2026.)
Required. The safety agreement. It is signed by three parties, you, the agency and her, before she is deployed, or for a first-time helper after the Settling-in Programme and before she starts work. It sets out the restrictions on cleaning the exterior of windows and commits you to keeping within them. The copy she signs is in her own language, which is the standard worth applying to the employment contract as well. (Same source.)
Not applicable. The Employment Act, which is where most people's instincts about notice, hours and overtime come from. Domestic workers are excluded from it. (MOM, who is covered by the Employment Act, page last updated 24 July 2025.) Every term you might assume is standard is only in your arrangement if somebody wrote it there.
Why it matters who drafted it
This is not an argument that agencies write dishonest contracts. Most do not. It is an argument about who a document protects when it was written by a party with its own exposure.
An agency carries a replacement guarantee, a service agreement with you, and a commercial interest in placements that stick. Those interests overlap with yours in most places and separate in a few specific ones: who pays when the placement ends early, what happens to the fee, what she is liable for if she resigns, and how a transfer works. Those are exactly the clauses to read twice.
Read the draft before the signing appointment, not at it. A contract read in a room with three people waiting is a contract that gets signed.
The clauses that are usually not symmetrical
Notice. Check the number of days on each side. It is common to see a longer notice period on hers than on yours, or a right for you to end it immediately with payment in lieu and no matching right for her.
Costs if she resigns. Look for anything making her liable for the agency fee, the flight, a training cost or a pro-rated placement charge if she leaves early. For a Filipina, repatriation is unconditionally yours, whoever ended it and for whatever reason, so a clause of this kind contradicts her verified contract.
Deductions. Breakages, a monthly amount for something she was given, a salary advance that turns into a loan. An employer must not hold her salary or her personal money, including her bank book or card, and she is to be paid no later than seven days after the end of each salary period. Cash payment is allowed but has to be recorded and signed by both of you, and if she asks for a bank transfer you have to pay that way. (MOM, salary guidelines, page last updated 14 March 2024.)
Rest days written as four a month. Singapore's rule is one a week and it binds you whatever the contract says, and at least one a month cannot be compensated in money. Four a month is fewer than weekly across a five-week stretch, so a draft that says four a month is not a concession to you, it is a clause that does not meet the rule. Write weekly and you satisfy both. (MOM, rest days and wellbeing, page last updated 16 January 2026.)
Where she works. Some drafts are vague about the address. She may only work for you, at the residential address declared to MOM, on domestic chores. (MOM, employment rules for migrant domestic workers, page last updated 27 February 2026.)
Her documents. A clause about the employer holding her passport for safekeeping. MOM's position is that employers should not keep it and should not press her to hand it over, and that she must have unrestricted access to it. (MOM, can an employer keep a worker's passport, checked 22 September 2026.)
The published minimum, and it is worth borrowing
If you are hiring a Filipina, the Philippine Embassy's Migrant Workers Office will not verify a contract that does not contain its provisions, and without verification she does not get the clearance that lets her leave the country. That gives this market the one thing it otherwise lacks: a published, checkable list. Below is what it requires. (Migrant Workers Office Singapore.)
| Term | What the verified contract says |
|---|---|
| Duration | Two years, unless ended earlier |
| Salary | At least 650 Singapore dollars a month |
| Daily rest | At least eight continuous hours, plus reasonable rest during working hours |
| Rest days | Four a month, on a day you both agree. Singapore's weekly rule is stricter and wins |
| Accommodation | Suitable, per MOM guidelines, with a reasonable amount of privacy |
| Food | At least three adequate meals a day, over and above salary |
| Medical | All necessary treatment, including consultation, medicine and hospitalisation |
| Home leave | A blank you fill in. The office recommends fifteen days every two years |
| Passport and permit | Both stay in her possession at all times |
| Notice | Thirty days in writing, either side |
| Repatriation | You bear the cost, regardless of who ended it and why |
| Recruitment costs | Never recoverable from her, by deduction, by loan or by any indirect route |
| Changes | Void without both signatures, a witness and the office's approval |
Two of those are stricter than most employers assume. Repatriation is unconditional, so a clause making her pay her own flight home if she resigns contradicts it. And she may never fund her own placement by any route, which closes the deduction, the loan and the arrangement routed through a third party alike.
One thing you cannot do if you are hiring a Filipina: sign a second, different contract after the verified one. That is a breach of the undertaking you sign, it can disqualify you from hiring Filipino workers again, and it can be reported in both countries.
If you are hiring an Indonesian, a Myanmar or any other helper, none of the above binds you and there is no other published standard, which is the argument for using this list as your own. The alternative is whatever your agency's template happens to contain.
What to check, in order, at the signing
Tick what the draft in front of you actually contains rather than what you were told it contains.
It exists in writing and you have read all of it. She has her own copy, in a language she reads, before anything is signed. If she is Filipina, this is the verified contract and not a second one. Salary in Singapore dollars, with the date she is paid each month and how. Nothing recovers the agency fee, the flight or any training cost from her by any route. At least eight continuous hours of rest a day. One rest day a week, not four a month, with one a month that cannot be bought out, and the compensation rate for any other rest day she agrees to work. Home leave: how many days, how often, who pays. The accommodation described rather than named. Three adequate meals a day, or an allowance and the amount. Medical treatment and who pays for what. Her passport and permit stay with her. Notice in writing, the same number of days both directions. Nothing makes her liable for costs if she resigns. Repatriation stated, and the answer is you. Grounds for ending it for cause, listed, both directions. Where a dispute goes first.
One more, which is not a clause: the date. A contract with no start date is a contract with no notice period, because notice is counted from somewhere.
After it is signed
The contract settles the terms. It does not settle the working day, the rest day arrangement in practice, the evening, or what happens when something breaks. Those are the house rules, and they are the document she will actually use.
What the contract does decide is money, so read it against what the first year actually costs before you sign it rather than after. The full first-year figure
The workbook
Hiring a Domestic Helper in Singapore. The direct hire route and the agency route, what each step costs, the offer sheet, the contract checklist, and the questions that predict whether a placement lasts.
The Shared Standard, Book 1.
Figures on this page were checked on 10 September 2026 against the sources named. Requirements and fees change. Check the source before you rely on a number.