For Jane Austen devotees, it has the making of a thousand page novel; a moving story of a blended family, inheritances and a multi-million dollar family trust with one son benefitting but not the other.
Successful Christchurch businessman Merv Cooper built the Kauri Lodge Retirement Village in Riccarton selling up in 2008 with sale proceeds of some $3.5 million put into a family trust. He and wife Rona had married fifty years previously. They had two children, Lilly and Amanda, now known as Miffy. Terms of the family trust named as beneficiaries ‘children of the settlors,’ that is: children of Merv and Rona.
There was a family secret. The High Court was told Rona had two children from a prior marriage: sons Rob and Ray. Rona’s first husband abandoned her and the two boys. This left Rona destitute in an era when there was no government welfare payments to support solo mothers. Rob went to live with Rona’s mother; Ray with Rona’s aunt. The past was buried. Ray was raised by Rona’s aunt Edna and her husband with Ray unaware that they were not his natural parents. Roy was brought back into Rona’s household after she married Merv; Rob was told that Merv was not his natural father, but the secret was kept from his half-sisters Lilly and Miffy. Rob was not told that he had a brother Ray.
Ray learnt part of the family secret when marrying at age 21; told he needed to use his legal registered birth name on his marriage certificate. Even then, he was not told who were his birth parents.
It was Ray’s wife Helen who was first to discover the sibling connection, having learnt through friends of her parents. Rob and Ray were in their forties before their respective spouses eventually achieved a reunion of the two brothers for the first time since childhood separation, in what the High Court was told was a chance meeting with the two families dining at the same time at the same Christchurch restaurant. Several previous attempts by their spouses to broker a meeting between the two had failed with one or other of the two brothers being ambivalent about meeting after so many years apart. News of their meeting came as a huge shock to Rona; it took some time before she was willing to meet with Ray. Once they had met, the two maintained occasional contact.
This complicated family history meant that after Rona’s death Merv wanted clarification as to who could benefit from their family trust. Legal documents were signed intended to clarify that Rob was a beneficiary. Nothing similar was done in respect of Ray. After Merv’s death, the surviving trustees were left with a multitude of legal opinions offering multiple options as to who were supposed beneficiaries of the family trust. The High Court was asked to rule.
Justice Dunningham ruled beneficiaries as ‘children of the settlors’ covered the natural children of Merv and Rona (Lilly and Miffy) and also any child bought up in the household unit as if a natural child of the two settlors (Rob). This ruling excluded Ray.
The High Court was told that in her will Rona left a fixed sum of $50,000 to each of her four natural children. This included Ray. Ray did not receive any inheritance from the relatives he presumed were his mother and father; ultimately their assets went to a daughter his supposed father had with a subsequent wife.
Ray told the High Court the fact that he was treated as an equal member of his mother’s family in her will and that he was specifically acknowledged as her ‘birth son’ in a touching letter written by her and delivered after her death had reaffirmed his place in the family.
re M & R Cooper No. 2 Trust – High Court (10.08.22)
22.144