Inheritance law: How to make your last wishes stick - and who can contest your will - The Front Page

Families can fight for decades in court over a will, and have.

While The Front Page is on its summer break, we are revisiting some of the biggest news stories from 2024. New episodes return on January 13th.

Losing a loved one is one of the worst things a family can go through - but it can get worse if people fight over the will.

There have been horror stories about mounting legal costs, sibling rivalries and families being torn apart over the distribution of a deceased estate. And it’s not just the uber-wealthy who can be caught in the crosshairs of these often years-long battles.

There are intricacies to watch out for too - like when an Auckland lawyer “clumsily” made himself the sole beneficiary of an elderly client’s entire estate, leaving the woman’s two daughters with nothing. He was ordered to stump up $22,000 for the blunder.

NZ Herald senior journalist Jane Phare told The Front Page that sometimes contesting a will can be more trouble than it is worth.

“Some of them go on for years. It can be incredibly expensive, $50,000 to $100,000, but some lawyers I spoke to said way more than that.

“In the end, it’s not really about the money. It’s about them being hurt. It’s about old family rivalries, sibling stuff going back decades,” she said.

“The people I spoke to, the estate planners and the lawyers, they recommended that you are transparent about your will, that you discuss it with your family, your children, so they’re all aware, there are no nasty surprises, and you tell them the reasons why.”

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Experts suggest making sure the will is up to date and that the family are treated equally, Phare said. And if you’re not going to treat them equally, leave clear reasons why someone has been cut out.

“The other way is to gift assets and money in your lifetime. And as a result, there’s nothing really left - or very little left - to fight over in the estate.”

Some may assume their wishes will be taken into account after they have died, but unfortunately, that is not always the case.

“I think it’s human nature. The children might behave when Mum and Dad are alive. They keep their family bond. But then all those rivalries come out like, ‘Mum always favoured you, Dad always favoured you, you got a lot more help than me, you’re more successful than me, I need the money more.’ Where there’s money, people behave really badly.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

• How to make your will foolproof
• Who can and cannot contest a will
• The state of 140 recommendations the Law Commission made to simplify wills and inheritance

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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