KEY POINTS:
Mistaken beliefs on both sides were at the centre of a long-running feud that has divided a wealthy Hawkes Bay family, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The Kain-Couper family have been split for more than seven years over a multimillion-dollar fortune and fought out a costly High
Court battle in March 2004.
The war over property assets was carried on to the Court of Appeal in May 2006.
In a weighty decision handed down this week, the Court of Appeal dismissed the most significant appeals, leaving the High Court decision largely in place.
The judges put the feud down to "mistaken beliefs on both sides". The court warned against people placing assets into structures "that they do not understand and which do not accord with commercial reality".
The family made the 2004 National Business Review Rich List with a collective estimated worth of $70 million. Even before their feud reached the Court of Appeal, lawyers' bills were said to be nearing $4 million.
Siblings Tom, Michael, Charles, Georgina and Harry Kain went to court to get their uncle, Tom Couper, removed as a trustee of the estate of their late mother, Janet Kain.
At the core of the dispute were several family trusts.
Those trusts contained assets which the Court of Appeal said Mr Couper felt he had built up and should keep under his control "albeit largely for the benefit of his wider family".
The Kain children "despite being merely discretionary beneficiaries of most of the trusts, appear to believe the assets belong to them", the Court of Appeal said.
"Unfortunately the mistaken beliefs on both sides have caused a major rift in the family leading to the current proceedings, the dissipation of large sums in legal fees, the diversion of energy away from more productive pursuits for the trusts and no doubt major personal strain on all involved."
The High Court at Christchurch had found mainly in favour of five Canterbury-based Kain children - including Tom and Charles of Apple Fields fame - and their father, George Kain. At the end of the High Court trial, the Kain siblings had run up a legal bill of $2.27 million, including $1.9 million in costs.
The property empire grew from an estate left by Ernest and Helen Couper to their son Mr Couper and daughter Janet Kain.
The dispute pitched the Kains, and their father against their youngest sibling, Mary Hutton, whose husband, Jonathan Hutton, was also a trustee the five siblings wanted removed.
Mr Couper, a wealthy Hawkes Bay farmer, angered the family by reorganising the family estate in the late 1990s.
He said he did it as he feared the present generation of Kains had begun to bleed the family fortune, at a cost to future generations.
In the High Court case, Justice Graham Panckhurst did not strip Mr Couper of his power of appointment to the family trusts, as the Kain siblings sought. But he recommended a professional trustee take over the family affairs - a company or individual that the judge instructed the warring family to agree on and appoint themselves.
- NZPA