THE court today suspended the lawyer’s licence of Lee Suet Fern, the daughter-in-law of Singapore’s late leader Lee Kuan Yew, over legal misconduct in the handling of the latter’s will, the South China Morning Post reported today.

The decision of the Court of Three Judges is final and may not be appealed.

In the latest development in the bitter Lee family feud, Suet Fern, who is married to the youngest of the three siblings, Lee Hsien Yang, is barred from practising law for 15 months.

The prominent lawyer was found guilty of misconduct in directly handling her father-in-law’s last will in the suit filed by the Law Society, which alleged that the lawyer had managed every aspect of the will’s drafting, and failed to advise 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.

Suet Fern had maintained that Kuan Yew was never her client, and that she had served him in her capacity as his daughter-in-law.

Though the judges had agreed that  “no solicitor-client relationship existed” between the two, they ruled that Suet Fern’s involvement did “material harm” in that Kuan Yew “ended up signing a document which was in fact not that which he had indicated he wished to sign.

“The fact that the Last Will and the First Will were materially similar was fortuitous, and does not discount the fact that the potential harm could have been far more severe than the actual harm that eventuated,” read the judgement sighted by the South China Morning Post.

However, the court declined to strike Suet Fern off the rolls – as sought by the Law Society – which would be “disproportionate” punishment.

A 15-month suspension of her lawyer’s licence, was deemed instead to reflect “both her culpability and the harm caused by her misconduct”.

In response to the ruling, Suet Fern’s son, Li Shengwu accused his uncle, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of shamelessness and called for his resignation.

Hsien Loong had “no shame about using state resources to settle grudges against relatives”,  Shengwu, a Harvard economics professor, wrote on Facebook.

“(Prime Minister Lee) should resign now, rather than continuing to undermine the rule of law in Singapore.”

Suet Fern in a statement disagreed with the court’s decision.

There was “no basis for this case to have ever been initiated,” she said.

“Anyone can revoke their own will while they are alive. If this will was not what Lee Kuan Yew wanted, he could easily have made another as he had done several times before.

“Lee Kuan Yew knew what he wanted. He got what he wanted.” – November 20, 2020.