Young dad Kane Watson lost his life in a beach tragedy at Muriwai, witnessed by his pregnant partner. Following a feud with his family over Givealittle funds, she will receive nothing. New Zealand Herald composite photo.
The pregnant partner of a young dad killed in a beach tragedy has gone to the High Court after a family feud led to her being cut from receiving any funds donated to Givealittle after his death.
Devoted dad Kane Hanna Watson died in hospital on August 25, two days after a sand dune collapsed on him while he was digging a hole at Muriwai Beach.
The accident happened in front of his pregnant partner Jasmine Cooke, their daughter, and some of Cooke’s three older children, who he was helping to raise.
More than $30,000 was raised in a subsequent online appeal from 835 donors - with the funds due to be released by Givealittle late Friday.
But Jasmine Cooke gained an interim freezing order from the High Court after a wrangle over the donations had seen her excluded from receiving a share.
Following the beach tragedy, a Givealittle page was launched by a friend of the Watson family to help raise funds for funeral expenses and “related costs”.
For the first two weeks - the majority of the time the page was live - it featured a picture of Watson with one of Cooke’s children, and revealed the 28-year-old’s partner was also pregnant with their second child together.
Creator Kristalle Tayler, talking to the Herald before the freezing order was made, said she initially created the page to help the family with Watson’s funeral costs.
It had a fundraising goal of $10,000 but donations from kindhearted Kiwis topped the $20,000 mark within hours.
Tayler said they planned to give some of the surplus to Cooke.
But relations soured between the two parties, and Cooke was cut out of receiving anything from the Givealittle page that raised $30,044 before it closed on 17 September.
Cooke’s sister and spokeswoman Shannelle Cooke said the way Watson lost his life was “horrendous” and what has followed has been “chaos”.
Over three weeks, two updates were made to the Givealittle description of how the donations would be used.
One was on September 8, and the latest change on September 18, removed any mention of Jasmine Cooke, and the fact she is pregnant.
That was a day after donations closed.
That latest change also added that after the cost of the funeral had been covered, $15,000 would be set aside for Watson’s children when they are adults, and the remainder would be given to his mum.
Tayler and Watson’s family have vehemently defended these actions, Tayler telling the Herald the conflict behind the scenes has been “foul and absolutely disgusting”.
The dead man’s sister Shaquille Thoumine - also talking before the High Court action was taken - said the money “quickly became a source of conflict,” claiming Jasmine Cooke refused to sign an agreement about how it would be used.
But Jasmine Cooke told the Herald through her sister that it had gone into her spam folder and she didn’t see it in time.
Thoumine said under the agreement, money would have been put away for the couple’s two children, as well as providing some support for Jasmine Cooke and her three older children, as well as Kane’s mum.
That was spelled out in the first update to the Givealittle page on September 8 - 14 days after the page went live.
It said the funeral costs - which were never quantified on the page - would be met by donations and ACC, and a further $10,000 would be set aside “to provide the opportunities Kane would have wanted” for his children.
Those funds would be “locked” in a savings account under three signatories, including family members and a lawyer.
Any remaining funds would be for immediate family support, “proportionally allocated” to Watson’s mother and Jasmine Cooke, as agreed by both parties, it said.
The Givealittle page went live on the morning of August 25 after Watson died in hospital.
The Herald understands that day also marked the beginning of tensions among those who loved the young dad.
The initial listing named Thoumine as a beneficiary, who would use the funds to cover funeral costs.
Shannelle Cooke said no one told her sister - in shock on the day of her partner’s death - that it was about to be launched.
“She was quite upset that she was sent that Givealittle page by somebody else.”
Thoumine said they didn’t need to tell Jasmine, because the initial description asked for donations to cover funeral costs that she believed her family would solely cover.
But Shannelle Cooke said her sister had been in a relationship with Watson for two years and felt blindsided.
“There’s been a lot of... miscommunication at the beginning that caused a lot of this upset,” she told the Herald.
Just seven hours after Watson’s death, and before the fundraiser had hit its initial $10,000 goal, a tense phone exchange occurred between Jasmine Cooke and Thoumine.
Jasmine Cooke claimed funds were going straight into Thoumine’s bank account “instead of where his children are”.
Thoumine said the money was for funeral expenses, then in an expletive-ridden response called her brother’s partner “greedy”.
Jasmine Cooke responded: “You’re not pregnant so shut up and listen to me”.
Shannelle Cooke told the Herald her sister was trying to get answers over the intentions for the page.
“She wasn’t overly comfortable with the page to start with, especially using her son’s photo,” she told the Herald.
“You’ve got all these emotions going on here. Jasmine from my understanding was asking for clarity... it was quite heavily promoting Jasmine and her pregnancy, and the boys.
“But Shaquille [Thoumine] was going to be the one that had all the control over the money,” Cooke claimed.
Thoumine told the Herald she had been listed as the beneficiary because the funeral costs would be her and her mother’s responsibility.
“We never expected Jasmine or her family to contribute toward these expenses” she told the Herald.
She said the money quickly became a source of conflict that the family “had to navigate while grieving our loss.”
Then Givealittle became aware of the scrap.
Thoumine and Tayler claim Givealittle was tipped off by people close to Jasmine Cooke.
Speaking for her sister, Shannelle Cooke told the Herald she emailed the platform seeking “transparency” after the page started getting updated.
She said others also contacted the online fundraiser.
Givealittle contacted Tayler as the donations - and the infighting - ramped up.
Tayler claims the crowdfunding site gave her three options: refund every donation, get a written agreement drawn up with Jasmine Cooke, or remove Jasmine Cooke as a beneficiary.
In a statement, Givealittle said “it understands there is a dispute between family members as to the allocation of funds, however that is a matter for the family members to resolve.
“Givealittle is a neutral fundraising platform, and any decisions around allocation of funds raised is for the page owner to decide.”
A message from Jasmine Cooke to Tayler – obtained by the Herald – stated it was important “all of Kane’s children are recognised”, a group she said included the children she had before they became a couple.
“The Givealittle page itself used my pregnancy and the children’s place in Kane’s life to encourage donations,” she wrote.
“Donors gave to support his family, and for most people that clearly meant the family he built with me and the children. It is important that this intent is honoured fairly.”
On September 11 Tayler emailed Jasmine Cooke a proposed contract that would see $10,000 set aside for Cooke and Watson’s two children, the payment of any outstanding funeral costs, with the remainder to be split evenly between Jasmine Cooke and Watson’s mother.
Any withdrawals from the fund set up for Watson and Jasmine Cooke’s daughter and unborn child would require the joint signatories of Watson’s mother, Jasmine Cooke and Thoumine.
In an email obtained by the Herald, Jasmine Cooke was given a deadline of 5pm, Monday 15 September to sign it.
Twelve minutes after that deadline had passed, and with no response from Jasmine Cooke, Tayler emailed her again.
“We have therefore taken your lack of response and failure to return the signed agreement as confirmation that you will not be moving forward with the agreement.
“As such, we will now proceed with our own process for managing and distributing Givealittle funds.
“This matter is now considered closed”.
A final update was made to the Givealittle page saying aside from the funeral costs, $15,000 would be placed in a bank account for Watson’s children until they “reached adulthood, to provide long-term support and opportunities”.
That account would be managed under three signatories - Jasmine Cooke was not one of them.
“Immediate family support” would also now be provided solely to Watson’s mother “in recognition of her role and connection to him”.
The update thanked all for their generous support and said those who felt the revised agreement “does not reflect your intention when you donated” should contact Givealittle for a refund.
The final contact between the two factions was via Facebook messenger several days after the deadline had passed, with Jasmine Cooke telling Tayler she hadn’t received the emailed contract.
In an interview with the Herald, Shannelle Cooke claimed the email ended up in the spam folder of her sister’s Gmail account and she never saw it.
“There was no follow-up text message or anything or phone call or Facebook message to say, ‘hey, we’ve sent this through’,” she said.
Tayler said there had been no “foul doing” and the changes were all made out of necessity.
Faced with Givealittle’s rules and advice, the family had to either agree on a contract for funds dispersal, or remove Jasmine Cooke as a beneficiary.
“She declined that agreement. And so now it’s on her,” Tayler said.
“That was not the family’s choice to do.”
Tayler said she was dismayed how the death of her best friend’s brother had turned into a fight over money.
Tayler said Jasmine Cooke – as a signatory – would have “been able to oversee everything”.
Both Tayler and Thoumine believed the situation highlights the need for binding contracts when Givealittle pages are set up.
Shannelle Cooke believed her sister had been portrayed as money-hungry.
“The comment section on Kane’s sister’s post has gotten really nasty,” she said, and Jasmine Cooke had been made to “look terrible”.
Shannelle Cooke, speaking on behalf of Jasmine Cooke, said all parties involved in the situation “probably said things they didn’t mean in the heat of the moment”.
She said that was understandable at a time when everyone was “grieving a massive loss”.
She said while her sister was “certainly not a saint”, she also wasn’t “this nasty money hungry person that she’s been made out to be”.
Cooke said part of the reason the page attracted so much support was because it highlighted that Watson had a pregnant partner, and because it featured a photo of him with one of Jasmine Cooke’s older children.
In late September Jasmine Cooke made a personal post on Facebook, saying how disappointed she was that a page created to support Kane’s family - and that had raised so much money - would not be used to support all his family.
She said contributing to the cost of Kane’s unborn child coming into the world “and day-to-day living for his household over the next wee while” shouldn’t be seen as unreasonable.
“Preserving something for his children when they are 21 is definitely nice, but also the baby still needs to be brought home from the hospital and have a place to sleep” she wrote.
Jasmine wrote she didn’t want to be commenting on money, or family affairs, and had experienced “more hate over my partner’s death than I have had over anything in my life.”
Givealittle would not talk extensively about the case.
But in a statement yesterday, it said: “Givealittle confirms that there is an interim freezing order which means the funds raised via the page are unable to be distributed to the page owner until the matter is resolved”.
The platform had earlier told the Herald that when a fundraiser “far exceeded” its initial donation goal, like the one for Watson, those behind the page had to provide an update on how the funds would be used.
Givealittle was a “neutral online platform” and had no say over fund distribution.
“The decisions on the distribution of these additional funds rest with the page owner.”
The family was due to receive the funds from Givealittle – minus the platform’s 5% fee – on the evening of Friday October 3.
Deductions would have been made to the $30,044 sum if any donors had sought refunds.
The fund freeze will instead now remain in place until at least October 20, the deadline for court submissions from all interested parties.
Tayler confirmed she was working on one in conjunction with Thoumine, but would not comment further.
Thoumine told the Herald what had occurred over the past four weeks had made it “impossible for me to properly grieve the loss of my brother and best friend”.
“Instead of focusing on honouring Kane and coming to terms with his passing, we have been forced to deal with demands, conflict and pressure around money,” she said.
“Every decision has been made in consultation with Givealittle, who advised us throughout,” Thoumine said.
“We are deeply grateful to everyone who gave so generously and ask for your understanding as we continue to do what we believe Kane would have wanted.”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 33 years of newsroom experience.
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