SEOUL â€" A feud at Samsung Group over the family fortune has spilled from the courts into an ancestral rite to commemorate the company’s founder.

Descendants of the late Samsung founder, Lee Byung-chull, including the Samsung Electronics chairman, Lee Kun-hee, are holding separate memorial services for the first time in 25 years, according to a statement Wednesday from CJ Group, a holding company for the interests of Lee Maeng-hee, a brother of Lee Kun-hee.

The two branches of the Lee family, the richest business dynasty in South Korea, are engaged in a legal battle over billions of dollars in shares of Samsung Group companies.

Lee Kun-hee was worth an estimated $8.3 billion as of March 2012, according to Forbes magazine.

Lee Maeng-hee has called his brother “greedy” and “childish,” while Lee Kun-hee has said his accuser was “kicked” out of the family and had not observed the family rites.

CJ Group said the Samsung Hoam Foundation, which oversees the yearly event, had informed the secretary of Lee Jay-hyun, the CJ chairman and the son of Maeng-hee, that he and his immediate family “will not be able to use the front door” to the burial site when going to pay their respects.

“Samsung’s notification to ‘come and go by the back door’ is tantamount to blocking the normal ancestral rites of other siblings and their descendants,” CJ said in a statement.

Lee Maeng-hee is suing over the ownership of shares in Samsung Electronics, which makes the best-selling smartphone in the world, and Samsung Life, an insurance company at the heart of the Samsung Group empire.

The Lee family usually gathers Nov. 19 for the ceremony, which is a tradition from the Confucian roots in Korea that extols the virtue of honoring ancestors. Family attendance for such an event is mandatory

South Koreans traditionally gather to offer specially prepared food and to bow before the ancestor’s burial mound on these anniversary days.

Samsung Group said in a statement that the feuding family groups would be holding separate memorial services, but that the path it had asked to be used was the one used every year by Samsung Group leaders coming to pay their respects.