A Palmerston North woman says she is changing her legal name after almost losing her house when a liquidator mistook her for someone else.
The woman, 29-year-old army medic Kim Dwyer, was mixed-up with an Auckland company director with the same name.
Kim Dwyer told the Herald she was “fully panicking” when her flatmates rang her to say an “auction” sign had been nailed to her fence.
After making frantic calls, she discovered a High Court had ordered the property to be sold in connection to the liquidation of a construction company called DD4 Infrastructure Ltd, a firm she had never heard of.
Dwyer hired lawyers to help her prove her identity and keep her home, which she said caused weeks of stress and cost her $1735 in legal fees.
She now wants Ben Francis, the liquidator involved, to apologise and reimburse her legal fees.
But Francis has refused to pay and told Dwyer “all appropriate steps were taken” before the case of mistaken identity was discovered.
While liquidating DD4 Infrastructure, Francis told the Herald he was trying to recover funds from Mr Kim Dwyer, one of the company’s directors. Companies Office records list Mr Kim Dwyer as having a residential address in the Auckland suburb of St Johns.
Francis told the Herald he searched for land titles owned by “Kim Dwyer” and found two properties in New Zealand.
He “took the view that Kim Dwyer was likely to be an uncommon name, particularly without a middle name” and thought the Palmerston North home that showed up in his search belonged to Mr Dwyer.
The property actually belonged to Kim Dwyer, the army medic, who told the Herald she had no idea any of this was happening.
Francis referred the Palmerston North address to the High Court in Wellington to start the sale process.
He said bailiffs from the High Court visited Dwyer’s home on five separate occasions between January 14-28.
He told the Herald that no one was home during these visits and the bailiffs left calling cards which were never responded to.
He said a lack of response from Ms Dwyer was consistent with Mr Dwyer’s unresponsiveness to previous requests from him for payment.
“Had Ms Dwyer contacted the bailiff following one of the visits, the process could have been halted prior to accruing any costs,” Francis said.
Dwyer, the army medic, was posted to the military base in Burnham at the time, but she had flatmates living in her Palmerston North home.
She said her flatmates told her they never received calling cards.
Once she learned of the Harcourts sign and impending sale, she immediately called the agency who explained what was happening and recommended she call the registrar for the High Court at Wellington.
“I thought it was a joke until that point.
“[The registrar] pretty much said ‘Your house is going to be sold unless you contact a lawyer’.”
Dwyer had no connection to DD4 Infrastructure and had no debts beyond the mortgage on her property, which was the only large asset to her name.
She had to borrow money from her family to hire lawyers to prove her identity to Francis and get the sale order on her house cancelled.
The liquidator confirmed the sale process was stopped immediately after he learned about the mistaken identity.
Emails seen by the Herald show Ms Dwyer asking Francis to pay her legal fees.
Francis declined and said he could not “justify further spending of creditor funds in this matter”.
A liquidator’s report submitted in October 2025 showed Francis’ company Blacklock Rose billed nearly $92,000 including GST to pursue funds for creditors of DD4 Infrastructure.
Francis told the Herald he believed it was “relatively clear” that Dwyer only incurred legal costs because she “chose” not to engage with him and the bailiff earlier.
When Dwyer asked Francis to apologise for the mistaken identity, he told her: “We are sorry you’re in this unfortunate position, however, as our solicitors conveyed to your solicitors, the steps taken were consistent with our obligations”.
Dwyer told Francis he was taking no accountability and said it was “crazy that liquidators can just go around trying to sell innocent people’s houses”.
“For my mental health, I accepted that I am never getting that money back,” she told the Herald.
She is now in the process of adding a middle name to her legal name “out of fear” because she does not want to become “a victim of mistaken identity” again.
“Not getting a proper apology is way worse than the money thing.
“It was the lack of empathy that frustrated me the most.”
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.