Solicitor Lee Suet Fern has been suspended for 15 months because She had “blindly followed the directions of her husband, a significant beneficiary under the very will whose execution she helped to rush through”, it said in a written judgment released yesterday.
The highest disciplinary body for the legal profession found her guilty of misconduct unbefitting an advocate and solicitor.
She’s found guilty of misconduct unbefitting an advocate and solicitor in her handling of Lee Kuan Yew’s last will.
Senior lawyer Lee Suet Fern has been suspended for 15 months by a Court of Three Judges over her handling of the last will of her late father-in-law Lee Kuan Yew.
The highest disciplinary body for the legal profession found her guilty of misconduct unbefitting an advocate and solicitor.
She had “blindly followed the directions of her husband, a significant beneficiary under the very will whose execution she helped to rush through”, it said in a written judgment released yesterday.
This followed a hearing in August, after the Law Society applied to have Mrs Lee struck off the roll.
A disciplinary tribunal (DT) had earlier this year found that she and her husband had misled the senior Mr Lee to sign a new will without the advice of his usual lawyer, Ms Kwa Kim Li.
While the court found Mrs Lee and the senior Mr Lee were not in a lawyer-client relationship – which would have made her conduct more grave – it agreed with the DT that she was guilty of misconduct.
The case centred on the role she played in the preparation and execution of Mr Lee’s last will, which was signed on Dec 17, 2013.
His last will differed from his sixth and penultimate will in significant ways, including the distribution of his estate among his three children as well as the demolition of his house at 38 Oxley Road.
It also did not contain some changes he had wanted and discussed with Ms Kwa four days earlier.
The DT had found Mrs Lee guilty of grossly improper professional conduct in February this year.
The Law Society subsequently applied to have her struck off the roll, and the case was referred to a Court of Three Judges.
The court held a virtual hearing in August, where the Law Society set out its arguments for why she should be disbarred, while Mrs Lee’s lawyers called for all charges to be dropped.
In its 98-page judgment, the court, comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Judge of Appeal Judith Prakash and Justice Woo Bih Li, said Mrs Lee had acted at the behest of her husband to push through the execution of the will in an “unseemly rush”.
The will was signed 16 hours after she sent a draft of it to Mr Lee.
The court noted that she had forwarded the draft, which was to have been based on the first will, without verifying if it was the correct version.
This showed a “notable lack of diligence” on her part, it added.
She was also content to have Mr Lee sign the last will on the basis of her “unconfirmed and ultimately untrue representation”.
She did it even though she knew she had no way of verifying the draft since she did not have the signed version of the first will.
As such, it was “clearly imprudent and grossly negligent” for her to have held out the representations she made about the draft last will as true.
The court further said when Ms Kwa – who had drafted and executed the senior Mr Lee’s first to sixth wills – was left out of the e-mails by Mrs Lee’s husband, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, Mrs Lee acquiesced to it and did not seem to pause to reconsider her position.
On the contrary, she had gone ahead to act on her husband’s wish to have the last will executed with “seeming haste” by arranging for her colleagues Bernard Lui and Elizabeth Kong to witness the signing.
She did it even before the senior Mr Lee had responded to his son Lee Hsien Yang’s suggestion to proceed.
This action effectively assured her father-in-law the required checks had been done to make sure the draft last will reflected his wishes, the court said. It also noted she had conceded her father-in-law would have believed and relied on her representations.
Describing Mrs Lee’s conduct as “especially unsatisfactory”, the court added that there was a “remarkable lack of diligence” on her part in ensuring her father-in-law’s wishes were properly ascertained and carried out.
The court noted, among other things, that she subsequently did not update Ms Kwa fully and frankly about what had transpired, and merely wrote her an innocuous quick note which said the will had been signed.
Whether intentionally or not, it left Ms Kwa with the impression there was nothing left for her to do, and removed any signs for any cause for concern on her part, it said.
It also said Mrs Lee might have mitigated her culpability if she had briefed Ms Kwa fully on the circumstances surrounding the signing of the will.
This might have conveyed some of the sudden urgency with which matters had proceeded and prompted further inquiry from Ms Kwa. “However, none of this was done,” it added.
Given her 37 years of experience, it noted “she could not have failed to know that the veracity of her representations was something that absolutely needed to be checked”.
The court added: “It is simply untenable that the need for caution, restraint and circumspection did not strike (Mrs Lee).”
In underlining the importance of dealing with wills, the court rejected the argument made by Mrs Lee’s lawyer, Professor Walter Woon, that it was sufficient the draft sent to her father-in-law was broadly similar to the version he had wanted.
This, the court said, suggests it is unimportant to ensure wills accurately reflect a testator’s intentions.
“A solicitor who fails to act with exceptional care and, where appropriate, as it is here, with restraint and circumspection must be prepared to have her conduct scrutinised and, perhaps, even her motives called into question,” it added.
Findings by Court of Three Judges
In suspending senior lawyer Lee Suet Fern for 15 months, a Court of Three Judges found her guilty of misconduct unbefitting of a lawyer in her handling of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s last will. Here are the court’s other key findings:
• Mrs Lee Suet Fern did not tell the truth in her testimony under oath to a disciplinary tribunal.
• She had made false representations to Mr Lee Kuan Yew about his will and had sent it without checking if it was the correct version.
• She acted “in complete disregard for the interests of Lee Kuan Yew”, and focused on what her husband Lee Hsien Yang wanted done, moving to get the will signed “in an unseemly rush”.
• Her conduct was “objectionable”.
• Mrs Lee was cleared of grossly improper conduct, as there was no implied retainer and hence no solicitor-client relationship between her and Mr Lee Kuan Yew. This was because Mr Lee did not regard her as his lawyer.
• It was Mr Lee Hsien Yang who had been communicating with Mr Lee Kuan Yew about his will, and he had asked his wife to send his father the draft last will.
Case centred on her role in preparing LKY’s last will
The case centred on the role that senior lawyer Lee Suet Fern played in preparing and executing founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew’s last will signed on Dec 17, 2013.
In January last year, the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) referred a case of possible professional misconduct involving Mrs Lee to Singapore’s Law Society.
The AGC noted that Mrs Lee appeared to have prepared the last will of the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew and arranged for him to execute it despite the fact that her husband, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, was a beneficiary and had his share of the estate increased under the last will.
The case was later referred to a disciplinary tribunal appointed by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, comprising Senior Counsel Sarjit Singh Gill and lawyer Leon Yee Kee Shian. The tribunal found Mrs Lee guilty of grossly improper professional conduct in her handling of her father-in-law’s will.
It said in its 206-page grounds of decision that the facts exposed an “unsavoury tale” of how Mrs Lee and her husband had misled the senior Mr Lee to sign a new will without the advice of his usual lawyer, Ms Kwa Kim Li, who had prepared all six of his previous wills.
The senior Mr Lee, who died on March 23, 2015, was then aged 90 and in poor health.
The tribunal held that Mrs Lee had acted as Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s lawyer as she was the only lawyer responsible for the last will after Mr Lee Hsien Yang cut Ms Kwa out by not including her in an e-mail thread urging his father to proceed with the execution.
Mrs Lee herself had told the AGC in December 2018 that her father-in-law had given her instructions to have his last will engrossed, or finalised, the tribunal noted.
This was also Mr Lee Hsien Yang’s position in a letter to a ministerial committee set up to look into options for his father’s Oxley Road house.
However, Mrs Lee later changed her position in her affidavit.
She initially did not deny drafting the will but later said her husband had forwarded the draft will to her, even though neither of them could produce the e-mails to prove this.
In acting as Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s lawyer, she failed to advance his interest unaffected by that of her or her husband, the tribunal found.
It described Mrs Lee as a “deceitful witness who tailored her evidence to portray herself as an innocent victim who had been maligned”, adding that her husband’s conduct was “equally deceitful”.
The matter was then referred to a Court of Three Judges, the highest disciplinary body for professional misconduct among lawyers.
In August, the court reserved judgment after a virtual hearing.
During the hearing, the Law Society, represented by lawyer Koh Swee Yen, had argued that Mrs Lee had been involved in the will despite knowing her husband stood to gain from it.
It also said that the lawyer of 37 years had hurried her father-in-law through the process of signing it without the advice of his usual lawyer.
Countering the Law Society’s arguments, Senior Counsel Kenneth Tan and Professor Walter Woon, a former attorney-general, said Mrs Lee was acting out of affection and concern as a daughter-in-law in assisting Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and was merely performing an administrative role.
They added that there could not have been any conflict of interest because Mr Lee Kuan Yew, “a brilliant lawyer”, was fully aware of what he wanted and had consented to Mrs Lee handling the will for him. They called for all charges to be dropped.
Court finds Lee Kuan Yew did not regard Lee Suet Fern as his lawyer in the execution of his last will
The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew did not view his daughter-in-law, senior lawyer Lee Suet Fern, as playing the role of his lawyer in the execution of his final will, according to the highest disciplinary body for the legal profession.
The Court of Three Judges based its decision on the legal precedent that a solicitor-client relationship arises only when both parties mutually intend to enter into one, or should reasonably have understood that they were entering into such a relationship.
This is so even if there is no formal documented agreement between them.
Such an implied retainer situation did not exist in the case of Mr Lee’s last will, the court said in a written judgment it released on Friday (Nov 20).
Given her actions, Mrs Lee should have understood that she was acting as Mr Lee’s solicitor in the preparation and execution of his last will. But the same could not be said of Mr Lee.
The court therefore acquitted Mrs Lee of charges of grossly improper conduct in the discharge of her professional duties. The charges, brought against her by the Law Society, had relied on there being a solicitor-client relationship between her and Mr Lee.
The court, however, found Mrs Lee guilty of alternative charges of misconduct unbefitting a solicitor and advocate – a charge that stands even if there is no implied retainer – and she was given a 15-month suspension. The Law Society had argued for her to be disbarred.
Lee Kuan Yew still considered Kwa Kim Li his lawyer
In its judgment, the court said there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Mr Lee had considered his daughter-in-law his lawyer.
It noted that he had initially expected his usual lawyer, Ms Kwa, to attend to the execution of his last will.
But he changed his mind because his son Lee Hsien Yang, Mrs Lee’s husband, told him that Ms Kwa was uncontactable and appeared to be away, and that it was unwise to wait for her return before proceeding with the execution of the last will.
The court said the elder Mr Lee changed his position at the behest of his son, not because he regarded Mrs Lee as his lawyer.
He did so as he believed the draft will to be identical to his first will, and that all that remained to be done was for him to sign it before two witnesses, the court noted.
“We do not think (Mr Lee Kuan Yew) ever ceased to regard Ms Kwa as his solicitor, at least where matters pertaining to his estate were concerned, even though he, like Ms Kwa, was not fully apprised of the situation,” the court said.
“It seems to us that (Mr Lee Kuan Yew) proceeded as he did essentially because (Mr Lee Hsien Yang) had assured him that he could proceed in that way, and that (Mrs Lee) would assist with only the administrative task of finding witnesses for the execution of the last will.
“While this was an inaccurate portrayal by (Mr Lee Hsien Yang), on the limited evidence before us, we think that (Mr Lee Kuan Yew) proceeded as he did because of the advice of his son, and not because he reasonably regarded (Mrs Lee) as his solicitor for the preparation and execution of the last will,” said the court.
It, therefore, found that Mr Lee Kuan Yew did not see Mrs Lee as his lawyer, preventing a solicitor-client relationship from arising.
‘Implausible’ for Mrs Lee to think no implied retainer
Still, the court held that Mrs Lee should have understood herself to have been acting as her father-in-law’s lawyer.
It rejected her argument that she viewed herself as merely assisting Mr Lee with the administrative task of finding witnesses for the execution of his last will.
The reason for its rejection is that Mrs Lee had put forward a draft of the last will as being ready for execution and represented this draft as the “original agreed will”, which the court said amounted to legal advice.
Mr Lee Hsien Yang later cut Ms Kwa out of the process by not including her in the e-mail thread in which he urged his father to proceed with the execution without waiting for her.
Mrs Lee could not have verified if the draft was identical to the first will, which she did not have a copy of. She also did not check with Ms Kwa if it was in fact the same will.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew had earlier indicated his wish to revert to the first will he had signed on Aug 20, 2011, and he proceeded to execute the last will on the sole basis that Mrs Lee had represented it as being identical to his first will.
The court said: “From an objective viewpoint, (Mrs Lee’s) subsequent failure to qualify the crucial representations which she had made indicates that she knew, or must have known, that she was taking on the role and responsibility of being (Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s) solicitor for the preparation and execution of the last will, at least to the limited extent of locating a copy of the executed version of the first will, checking the draft last will against it and ensuring that the draft last will was ready for execution.”
It later emerged there were differences between the draft will, which became Mr Lee’s last will, and the first will he had intended to sign.
Mrs Lee also made arrangements for the last will to be executed with her colleagues as witnesses, while personally monitoring the arrangements closely. She saw to the safekeeping of an original copy of the last will after it was executed.
When Mrs Lee subsequently informed Ms Kwa of the execution of the last will, she did not alert Ms Kwa to the circumstances under which it had been executed, the court said.
As a result, any cause for concern pertaining to the accuracy of Mrs Lee’s representations about the draft last will would not have been evident to Ms Kwa.
“Viewing all these matters objectively, we find it implausible that (Mrs Lee) could reasonably think that there was no implied retainer between (Mr Lee) and her,” the court said.
Events involving Lee Hsien Yang ‘troubling’ and ‘disturbing’: Court
Mr Lee Hsien Yang’s role in his father’s last will was set out by a Court of Three Judges, which noted more than once in its judgment that his wife Lee Suet Fern had simply acted on his wishes and focused on what he wanted done.
The court had examined Mr Lee Hsien Yang’s role, in trying to discern Mrs Lee’s culpability.
It found that the younger Mr Lee had got his wife involved in the preparation and execution of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s last will, and described some aspects of an e-mail that he sent on Dec 16, 2013 as “troubling”.
Over 16 hours from Dec 16 to 17, Mrs Lee had forwarded a draft will to the senior Mr Lee at the instruction of her husband, made arrangements for her colleagues to witness its signing, and ensured this was expeditiously done. All the while, she kept tabs on the process, even sending out instructions while on a plane to Paris.
The court, which found Mrs Lee guilty of misconduct for her involvement in the will, said her conduct had to be seen in the light of her “divided loyalties”.
“On the one hand, (she) was loyal to her husband, who was a significant beneficiary under the last will and who was evidently keen to rush its execution.
“On the other hand, (she) had a responsibility to act honourably and to ensure that (Mr Lee Kuan Yew), who she would reasonably have regarded as her client, was fully apprised of the factual position before he proceeded to execute the last will.”
A question the court considered was whether Mr Lee Hsien Yang or Mrs Lee had received instructions from Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
The couple had initially said to a ministerial committee – set up in 2016 to look into Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s wishes for his family home at 38 Oxley Road – that the senior Mr Lee had given express instructions to Mrs Lee to prepare his will.
But to a disciplinary tribunal examining Mrs Lee’s conduct, they changed their account and said Mr Lee Kuan Yew had given his instructions to Mr Lee Hsien Yang instead. It was Mr Lee Hsien Yang who had roped Mrs Lee in on Dec 16, 2013 to help with the will, as he was travelling to Brisbane that very day, the couple added.
In its judgment released yesterday, the court said that after reviewing evidence including e-mails between the parties, it agreed that Mr Lee Kuan Yew had indeed conveyed his wishes to his son.
‘DIVIDED LOYALTIES’
On the one hand, (she) was loyal to her husband, who was a significant beneficiary under the last will and who was evidently keen to rush its execution.
On the other hand, (she) had a responsibility to act honourably and to ensure that (Mr Lee Kuan Yew), who she would reasonably have regarded as her client, was fully apprised of the factual position before he proceeded to execute the last will.
A Court of Three Judges, which found Mrs Lee Suet Fern guilty of misconduct for her involvement in the will, and said her conduct had to be seen in the light of her “divided loyalties” to her husband Lee Hsien Yang and to Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
“All of this leads us to conclude that the ministerial committee statements were untrue and gave the incorrect impression that Mr Lee Hsien Yang had not himself been involved in receiving (Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s) instructions to revert to the first will.”
The entirely contradictory accounts given to the ministerial committee and disciplinary tribunal showed dishonesty on the part of the couple, the court added.
It suggested that Mr Lee Hsien Yang may have wanted to avoid the impression that he had any part to play in his father’s wishes to revert to his first will and insert a demolition clause stating his wishes for the Oxley Road house to be torn down.
Another issue was whether Mr Lee Hsien Yang had forwarded the draft last will to his wife to send over to his father. He had insisted that he did so, but the court said that it believed Mr Lee Hsien Yang was “not telling the truth”. Mrs Lee’s evidence was “similarly untrue and to be rejected”, it added.
It noted that neither Mr Lee Hsien Yang nor Mrs Lee could provide any evidence that he had done so, as they insisted that the e-mails had been deleted.
Conversely, there was evidence that Mrs Lee had been involved in the drafting of the senior Mr Lee’s first will, and had old copies of it in her inbox.
The court also found that Mrs Lee was in no position to make any representation to the effect that the draft last will was the same as the actual version of the first will, given that the “executed version of the first will was never in her hands”.
“Despite this, she did make such a representation, which was in fact false,” the court said.
It also described as “disturbing and critically important” a series of events related to Mr Lee Hsien Yang’s actions on Dec 16, 2013.
After his wife had sent the senior Mr Lee the draft will on Dec 16 at 7.08pm, copying Ms Kwa Kim Li, Mr Lee Hsien Yang had sent his father an e-mail at 7.31pm copied to Mrs Lee and the senior Mr Lee’s secretary, but with Ms Kwa removed from the list of addressees.
In that e-mail, he said he could not contact Ms Kwa, and that he did not think it was wise for his father to wait until she was back before signing his last will.
He also said Mrs Lee could arrange for witnesses for the execution of the last will. Citing this e-mail, the court said several aspects of it were “troubling”.
The court noted that it did not appear that Mr Lee Hsien Yang had checked with anyone when Ms Kwa would be contactable, adding that he had removed her from the list of e-mail addressees without knowing whether his father would agree to it being done.
Ms Kwa was the lawyer who had prepared all the six previous versions of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s will, and he had discussed his last will with her just days before.
“It is clear from this short exchange that (Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s) shift in position was initiated by Mr Lee Hsien Yang, and not by Mrs Lee or Mr Lee Kuan Yew himself,” the court said.
It added that “the situation changed materially” after this 7.31pm e-mail as Mrs Lee became the only lawyer remaining on the correspondence, and the onus then fell on her to ensure that the version of the will signed by the senior Mr Lee truly reflected his wishes and was accurate.
However, she had not done so, and had been happy to push through the execution of the will in an “unseemly rush”. Throughout the process, Mrs Lee had also been relying entirely on what her husband said were the wishes of the senior Mr Lee, the court said.
Past cases of lawyers suspended for misconduct involving conflict of interest
The Court of Three Judges looked at these three precedent cases involving conflict of interest before handing down a 15-month suspension to lawyer Lee Suet Fern for her role in the preparation and execution of the last will of her father-in-law Lee Kuan Yew.
1. Ahmad Khalis Abdul Ghani
Mr Ahmad Khalis Abdul Ghani was instructed by a client named Rasid to file a petition to get documents for him to administer his late father’s estate.
The other beneficiaries of the estate had misgivings about Mr Rasid being the sole administrator.
The lawyer assured them that Mr Rasid would not be able to deal with the assets, which included a property, without their consent.
Mr Rasid later mortgaged the property to secure a loan without the other beneficiaries’ knowledge. He fell behind on the mortgage payments, causing the bank to foreclose.
The lawyer was found to have an implied solicitor-client relationship with the other beneficiaries and failed to extricate himself from the position of conflict.
He was suspended for two years.
2. Peter Ezekiel
Mr Peter Ezekiel acted for two clients with conflicting interests and ended up favouring one over the other.
One client was an employee charged with making a false declaration in his application for a work permit by inflating his salary. The other was the worker’s employer, who counter-signed the application.
The employee told the lawyer that he had been deceived by his employer and genuinely believed his salary was the amount stated in the application.
The lawyer did not convey this to the Attorney-General’s Chambers in written representations. The worker was fined $6,000 and repatriated to India.
The lawyer, who had antecedents, was suspended for three years.
3. Kay Swee Tuan
Ms Kay Swee Tuan asked a fellow lawyer to certify a lasting power of attorney (LPA) which would give her sister, Ms Kay Swee Pin, the power to act on behalf of the latter’s long-time partner, Mr Ng Kong Yeam.
An LPA is a document which allows a person, known as a donor, to appoint another, known as a donee, to make decisions on his behalf should he lose the mental capacity to do so.
Ms Kay Swee Tuan had asked Mr Sum Chong Mun to certify the form after her signature was rejected because of her relationship to the donee.
Her conduct was considered to be a case of conflict of interest as she got Mr Sum to help her sister become a donee, with blatant disregard for Mr Ng’s interests.
She was suspended for 2½ years.
Source: https://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/Headlines/Lee-Suet-Fern-suspended-for-15-months
