Dominic George: How to carve up the family farm

We have a love affair with land in New Zealand.

Equality and fairness often go out of the window when big money is involved.

As far as party tricks go, my old First XV captain took the cake.

He was a tough, uncompromising b*****d whom the lads would follow into battle each week without a second thought.

Which is why his party trick had a glorious sense of irony to it. The reason I mention him is because he's become a successful lawyer who's taken up an interest in the issue of farm succession; a topic he's spoken about on Farming First.

The handing down or carving up of the family farm, I'm told, is one of those classic situations where you only really give it any serious thought once it hits you in the face. Until then it's merely something that lingers in the background to be left for another day.

However, evidence would suggest the earlier it's sorted out, the better. Ian Blackman, author of Keeping Farming in the Family, is adamant on this point. He also argues the secret to a successful succession plan is a proper legal structure. In Blackman's view, there are three common denominators to every succession plan, with the most difficult of these being fairness to the non-succeeding children.

He believes it can be overcome through said legal structure, although qualifies this by suggesting non-succeeding children receiving an equal share of the farm is a myth that needs to be dispelled.

We have a love affair with land in New Zealand, from the classic quarter-acre urban Kiwi dream to the large-scale tracts of farmland that we so desperately want to see remain owned by New Zealanders. But greed will almost always overcome fanciful notions of equality and fairness.

It's easy to sit in the wings and denounce greed. It's easy to regurgitate platitudes about the notion of family, but when all is said and done, most people will look after themselves. It's simply an inherent human trait.

I've heard people say, in relation to the potential sale of Lochinver Station, that if someone came up to you and offered you a sum above and beyond what you expected, you'd take it. They're right, I would. And so would most people. Yet most opinion polls on the subject have shown an unbelievable amount of sanctimonious b******s via the results. Of course, like most polls of this type, they're hypothetical and therefore worthless. But what happens when it is your land, or partly your land? Again, I think the notion of "family" is just that -- a notion, or idea and will nearly always come second to the desire of the individual.

One of the most extreme examples is the Ewen Macdonald saga. Succession issues are believed to be behind Macdonald burning down an old house, vandalising a partially new house and painting graffiti on the house belonging to his brother-in-law, Scott Guy, and his wife, Kylee. Macdonald was found not guilty of Guy's 2010 murder.

A recent survey of nearly 800 farmers shows 63 per cent believe succession is passing on the farm to the family -- bearing in mind there's always an exception to the rule -- that's rubbish. It's like a 5-year-old holding the simplistic view that the government is there to help people -- cute and idealistic, but naive in the extreme.

The likelihood is that it's one or two family members who reap the benefits, not the family or whanau. I can't imagine it's easy to carve up the family land, or any land for that matter. Then again, for some it may be black and white. The issue is at what point do you forsake the family for the land?

This is all stuff that is best left in the hands of people who know what they're doing, albeit there are varying degrees of competency among the legal and accountancy professions. I can assure you my former First XV captain turned lawyer is one of the best in the business and abandoned his mock sex-change party trick many moons ago.