Fight the heir who runs the group, and the group fights back. Ask LG

Start with what Singapore could not change. The estate is Korean, the 2018 agreement is governed by Korean law, the appeal sits in the Seoul High Court and the complaint is with the Seoul police under Korea's Attorney Act. No Singapore court reaches any of it. The useful question is narrower: if a Singapore family's operating company accused a former executive of quietly advising the heirs suing the chairman, what would Singapore law say, and what should the family have written down first?

Korea's rule is wide. Article 109(1) of the Attorney Act, in the version in force from 2 October 2026 and read on the national law database on 16 October, punishes anyone who is not a lawyer and who, for money or another benefit received or promised, handles legal affairs in a lawsuit, a family case or a matter under investigation, including legal consultation and drafting documents, or who brokers such work. The penalty is up to seven years' imprisonment or a fine of up to ₩50 million, and the two may be combined. Paid legal advice alone is inside its words.

Singapore's equivalent is narrower in its words. Section 33(1) of the Legal Profession Act 1966, current version as at 16 October 2026 and read on Singapore Statutes Online that day, makes it an offence for an unauthorised person to act as an advocate, a solicitor or an agent for a party to proceedings, with a fine of up to $25,000 or six months' imprisonment. Section 33(2) adds three acts that matter in a family case: preparing any document relating to a legal proceeding; taking instructions for, or preparing, papers to found or oppose a grant of probate or letters of administration; and sending letters threatening proceedings on a claimant's behalf.

Section 33(2) reverses the burden: the helper is guilty unless he proves he acted for no fee, gain or reward, and a first offence carries a fine of up to $10,000. Section 33(3) separately forbids placing a lawyer's services at someone's disposal for reward. What the section does not list, in terms, is paid advice on strategy or on the press. Whether that alone would be caught here is for a court; the words are about acting in proceedings and preparing papers. The safe course for an heir in Singapore is that strategy comes from a licensed lawyer.

The second Singapore rule binds insiders. Section 157(2) of the Companies Act 1967, read on SSO on 16 October 2026, says an officer or agent of a company must not make improper use of the position, or of information acquired through it, to gain an advantage for himself or anyone else or to cause the company detriment. Section 157(5) says an officer includes anyone who has at any time been one. Under section 157(3), as amended with effect from 6 May 2026, a breach makes him liable to the company for any profit or damage, and is an offence punishable by a fine of up to $20,000 or 12 months.

So in Singapore a former president who carried the group's information to one branch of the family would be exposed whatever his motive, and the company could enforce it. That is the company acting on its own rights. On the other side is section 216: any member may ask the court for relief if the company's affairs are conducted oppressively to members or in disregard of their interests as members. The widow and daughters hold LG Corp shares. But section 216 protects members as members, not as litigants in an estate; we have read no case applying it to a company's stance in a family inheritance suit.

The planning lesson sits at the moment of division, not in the courtroom. A family that hands one heir the operating group can say, in the same signed document, that the group's companies take no part in any dispute among family members about the estate: no company money, staff, advisers or information for either side, and any complaint about an insider's conduct in such a dispute goes first to a named independent director or mediator. It is the family's own version of what a sound succession plan aims for: the business passed on properly, and the family treated fairly, by separate routes.

The second document is the advice each signatory takes. The Koo agreement was signed in the weeks after a funeral, and a court has now found it valid. A division that each person signs only after advice from a lawyer of their own, paid by the estate, answers any later claim that someone was misled, and removes the need for anyone to look for a helper inside the group. Insiders can then stay insiders. Where an executive is close to one branch, a written conflict rule lets him declare it and step aside before anyone asks him for help.

For the reader whose family's companies are run by one heir, the questions can be asked at the table while everyone still agrees. If the family disagreed about the estate tomorrow, whose side would the companies' lawyers and finance team be on? Did each person who signed the division have an adviser of their own? Is there a written rule that the companies stay out of family disputes, and who enforces it? Wanting the answers is stewardship, not suspicion. The Koo family's appeal returns to the Seoul High Court on 27 November.