Founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) made a total of seven wills.

All the wills, except for the last will, were prepared by lawyer Kwa Kim Li (“KKL”) from law firm Lee and Lee, Advocates and Solicitors.

The last will was prepared by the PM Lee Hsien Loong's brother, Lee Hsien Yang's (LHY) wife Lee Suet Fern's (LSF) law firm Stamford Law Corporation (now Morgan Lewis Stamford LLC).

On 12 April 2015, PM Lee learnt about the contents of the last will, when it was read to the family. It was during this reading that the dispute between PM Lee and LHY over the demolition of the house arose, prompting PM Lee to look up old family emails.

It was only in June 2015 that PM Lee saw copies of the six wills preceding the last will, when KKL provided the family with them. Only then was he able to review and compare the terms and changes between those wills and the last will.

We traced the changes based on the edited summary of PM Lee's statutory declaration he released on June 15 and also the circumstances that led to the family dispute with his siblings LHY and Lee Wei Ling (LWL).

First Will (August 20, 2011)

- Demolition Clause first appeared

- LKY gave each child an equal share of his estate

Second to Fourth Will (dates unknown)

- Demolition Clause retained

- No change to the share of his estate

Fifth Will (date unknown)

- Demolition Clause removed

- No change to the share of estate

Sixth Will (November 2, 2012)

- No Demolition Clause

- LKY gave LWL an extra share (relative to LHY and LHL) of the house, and he told LWL about it

Last Will (December 17, 2013)

- Demolition Clause "somehow found its way back into the Last Will"

Yet, the last will that LSF and her law firm prepared and got Mr Lee to sign went beyond that. Significantly, they (LHY and LSF) re-inserted the Demolition Clause, even though that clause does not appear to have been discussed at the time of the making of the Last Will and had in fact been removed by Mr Lee from his immediately prior two wills (the Fifth and Sixth Wills)...

The Demolition Clause in the Last Will is now being used by Dr Lee Wei Ling (“LWL”) and Mr Lee Hsien Yang (“LHY”) to claim that Mr Lee was firm in his wish that the house at 38 Oxley Road (the “House”) be demolished, and that he was not prepared to accept its preservation or contemplate options short of demolition. There is no basis for these claims, not least because of the deeply troubling circumstances concerning the making of the Last Will...

- Equal share of the estate among LKY children reinstated; Gift-over clause missing

Neither was the Last Will a wholesale reversion to the First Will. The Last Will differed in significant respects from the First Will. For example, the First Will contained a gift-over clause with thorough provisions for the scenarios where LWL, LHY or I predeceased Mr Lee. This important clause was absent from the Last Will, and there is nothing which suggests that Mr Lee had given instructions for it to be removed.

In fact, if, as appears from LSF’s Email, the change Mr Lee had wanted to make to his will in December 2013 was to reinstate the equal division of the Estate among the three children, that could have been easily done by reverting to the Fifth Will (which provided for equal division). The Fifth Will was as complete as the Sixth Will and similar in all material respects to the Sixth Will save for the proportions of the Estate bequeathed to each of the three children. Further, as KKL had prepared the Fifth and Sixth Wills, she could easily have been asked to make that one change.

Top photo from Getty Image

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