A 26 year delay in registering with Land Information a status change for Maori land led to protracted legal argument over who owned a Bay of Plenty property, highlighting ongoing problems integrating Maori title into the separate Land Information registry which records ownership of most New Zealand land.
The two systems of recording land ownership have little in common.
Changes of ownership to Maori land are overseen by specialist Maori land courts; a regime designed to maintain a written record of ownership changes, ensuring land in customary Maori ownership devolves according to Maori custom.
By contrast, there is no judicial oversight of changes to ownership for land described as
‘general land,’ recorded on an electronic register maintained by Land Information.
General land encompasses most residential, commercial and rural land in New Zealand.
For general land, the maxim is: ‘the register is everything.’ Any person registered with Land Information as owner of general land, in the absence of fraud, has conclusive rights of ownership.
Tight legal procedures surrounding transfers of general land minimise instances of fraud.
Administrative problems have followed a partial integration of the two separate records of land ownership.
For Maori land having status of ‘Maori freehold land,’ ownership can be recorded on a Land Information title (with Land Transfer Act rules applying). The requirement for Maori Land Court oversight is signalled by noting on the Land Information title that the land in question has Maori freehold status.
For Te Poroa whanau in Bay of Plenty, administrative stuff-ups led to disputed ownership of a small block of ancestral land.
Maori Land Court records said it was Maori freehold land; Land Information records said it was general land.
The Maori Appellate Court was told that the Maori Land Court approved in 1996 a two hectare property in Maori ownership, then currently held as general land, to be given the status of Maori freehold land.
By oversight, this change in status was not noted on the existing Land Information title.
Ten years later, the property was transferred to a family trust, known as the Te Hana Family Trust; part of a whanau estate planning scheme.
With no designation on the Land Information title that this land was Maori freehold land, lawyers did not realise Maori Land Court approval was needed.
This mistake emerged only after deaths of Joseph and Grace Malcolm, who set up the Te Hana Trust.
Those inheriting from Joseph and Grace said the land was theirs. Earlier transfer of the family’s Maori freehold land to trustees of the Te Hana Trust was invalid; no Maori Land Court approval was given, they said.
Beneficiaries of the Te Hana Trust said their interest was noted on the title first; the land was theirs. Trustees of their Trust said failure to get Maori Land Court approval was an honest mistake, they were not party to any fraud; Land Transfer Act rules meant the Trust could not be removed as owner.
The Maori Appellate Court said land cannot have two different statuses at the same time. It cannot be both general land and Maori freehold land.
The effect of Land Transfer Act rules is that status of general land changes only when that status change is registered on the Land Information title, it ruled.
Te Hana Trust is owner, the court said. There was no fraud in the manner it became registered as owner.
When Te Hana Trust’s ownership was registered, status of the land was recorded, albeit incorrectly, as general land. No Maori Land Court approval was then required.
Belatedly correcting the Land Information register to record the land’s status as Maori freehold was irrelevant to validity of Te Hana Trusts’ existing ownership.
Malcolm v. Te Hana Trust – Maori Appellate Court (8.12.25)
26.041