Lee family feud: Lee Suet Fern’s legal misconduct case goes to appellate court
- The daughter-in-law of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew is appealing a verdict that found her guilty of improper conduct in directly handing the patriarch’s will
- The case – seen as a key issue in the family’s bitter public quarrel – is being heard by the Court of Three Judges, the country’s highest disciplinary body for lawyers
The Court of Three Judges, led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, was convened to hear an appeal lodged by Lee Suet Fern, the wife of Lee Kuan Yew’s youngest child Lee Hsien Yang, following a disciplinary tribunal’s decision in February that she was guilty of improper conduct in directly handling the final version of the elder statesman’s will.
That verdict made Lee Suet Fern, the former head of one of the country’s biggest law firms, liable for a fine, suspension or disbarment.
At the centre of the case are allegations that she managed every aspect of the will’s drafting, and failed to advise Lee Kuan Yew to seek legal counsel from a third party to avoid a conflict of interest – given that her husband was a beneficiary of the will.
Lee Suet Fern maintains Lee Kuan Yew was never her client, and that she had instead been instructed by him as his daughter-in-law.
In the court session, held via Zoom on Thursday, Lee Suet Fern’s lawyers Walter Woon and Kenneth Tan emphasised this argument to the Court of Three Judges, the highest appellate body for disciplinary matters involving lawyers.
Woon, a former attorney general, said his client had only played an “administrative role” in the process.
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Tan meanwhile said Lee Suet Fern was involved because “she saw it as a mere forwarding of the will”.
Earlier email records showed that she had sent her father-in-law a draft of the will at 7.08pm on December 16, 2013, and he signed it at 11.10am the next day.
In their submissions to the court, the lawyers also argued that the disciplinary tribunal had “cherry-picked” evidence and “totally ignored” facts that favoured the respondent.
“The [tribunal] sought to convey the impression that Lee Kuan Yew was a doddering old dotard being taken advantage of by his son and daughter-in-law, ignoring evidence … that he was lucid and read the last will before initialling on every page,” they added.
Woon also pointed out that the will in question was not a “new will”.
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The final will in which Lee Suet Fern was involved was the seventh prepared by Lee Kuan Yew – a Cambridge-trained lawyer who served 31 years as Singapore’s prime minister – between the death of his wife Kwa Geok Choo in 2010 and his own death at age 91 in March 2015.
“[The final will] was in substance the will that was signed in August [2011],” Woon said.
Representing the Law Society – which is asking the court to uphold the disciplinary tribunal’s verdict – lawyer Koh Swee Yen highlighted that unlike the earlier versions, the final will was signed without the presence of Kwa Kim Li, Lee Kuan Yew’s niece and long-time lawyer.
For the execution of the final will, Koh noted that Kwa was “displaced”, adding that the “only lawyer” left in the equation was Lee Suet Fern.
Koh also said events had led to Lee Suet Fern keeping an original copy of the signed will, which had “reinforced” the tribunal’s finding of an implied retainer – meaning there was a tacit understanding that she was acting as Lee Kuan Yew’s lawyer.
With this in mind, Lee Suet Fern, having acted as a lawyer for Lee Kuan Yew, would have failed to advance the latter’s interest, Koh said.
She described the episode as one of “grossly improper conduct” on the part of the late patriarch’s daughter-in-law.
There was no immediate indication from the court on when it would hand down its decision.
The appeal before the Court of Three Judges is taking place more than three years after a public feud erupted among Lee Kuan Yew’s three children.
Lee Kuan Yew had previously said in public that he detested the way the homes of national figures such as India’s founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru were left in “shambles” after they were converted into tourist attractions.
Prime Minister Lee later went before parliament to dispel the allegations and offer assurances that he had recused himself from the government’s decision-making process on the issue.
He also said the government would not change the status quo of the house – which is owned by Lee Hsien Yang and occupied by Lee Wei Ling – as long as Lee Wei Ling continued to live there.
Officials tasked into looking into the matter in 2018 said outright demolition, a complete preservation of the home as a national monument, and a partial preservation of the basement dining room – the site of historic meetings – were the three options a future government could consider when the time came to decide the fate of the property.
