A piece of New Zealand land was owned by my great-grandfather…

Question

A piece of New Zealand land was owned by my great-grandfather and not sold. I
and some of my relatives may be able to be registered at the Registrar General
of Land as the current owners if we can trace down through the executors of the
intervening generations.

I understand that this can be expensive if done by lawyers but maybe I can do it
myself. Can you point me to any tips?

At the very least is there donkey work I can do to save legal time.

It would also be interesting to see the page on the linz site that shows me
exactly what I would have to state to be recorded on the title. A pertinent
example would be useful.

Chris The Lawyer · Accepted Answer

Chat Conversation Started
christhelawyer :

There are 2 parts to this process. First you will need to see what wills were
made by your great grandfather and the relevant descendants. For example, if he
had 2 children, who inherited equally then they would be his heirs. If they also
left wills then you need to trace their benficiaries, and so on down to your
generation. The complexity of this task will depend on whether you have many
ancestors in the path, and whether you can locate their wills. In each case you
would need to complete a transmission pursuant to the will down to you and the
other descendants. This would not be for the faint hearted and I do suggest you
ask a lawyer to help. Ultimately you may need to make application to the High
Court for assistance if there are too many missing people. I wonder who has paid
the rates in the meantime? This would be pointless if you discover that the
rates had accumulated to the extent that they exceeded the value of what you are
getting. LINZ are not particularly useful unless you are a licenced conveyancing
professional (a conveyancing lawyer) and most of the site is only available to
subscribers. The law itself is not difficult, but the real difficulty will be
tracing the descendants and their wills. I would suggest you start witha full
family tree and the dates of death. Then trace the wills, if any.

christhelawyer :

The transmission is a fairly simple document-it recites what was to happen under
the will. If there is no will then the Administration Act would apply and you
would have to get Letters of Administration for those without wills. This act
says who gets the estate-usually the children, surviving spouses etc.

christhelawyer :

What you need to go on the title would be the evidence I have described as
above. Titles are all electronic, and there are no paper documents as such.

JACUSTOMER-xpsaxtp2- :

Regarding rates the city council says to me "as you are not currently recorded
as the owner you cannot be liable for the rates. Once you are the owner you
would be liable from the date you take title".

christhelawyer :

Who is paying the rates now?

JACUSTOMER-xpsaxtp2- :

Avery good question. I'll have to ask the council guy. I do know that when
another of these parcels was noted a few decades ago the solicitor of the family
member involved wrote very heavy words to the council saying that in no way
would his client pay any rates.

JACUSTOMER-xpsaxtp2- :

As you may have gathered, the land currently in question is a recently
discovered unsold snippet from large holdings our family owned in the past. The
council will acquire it but say that will pay us if we can proof current
beneficial lineage.

christhelawyer :

There is a limitation period for rates-the council cannot go back too far in the
past. They may may be prepared to look at the family tree to sort this-and there
other ways of taking title. For example, they could buy it under a rating sale
and pay the money to the descendants.

christhelawyer :

How much is the land worth do you know?

JACUSTOMER-xpsaxtp2- :

I'm not sure what the land is worth. It is in a Wellington inner city suburb. I
don't have the exact measurement but from the scale on birdseye photo supplied
by the council I'd say it is approx. 30 metres x 7 metres currently largely used
as a public walkway, although the council has [probably indavertantly] allowed a
commercial building to be built on part of it. I asked a valuer for a ball park
but he wouldn't do it except at full fee because he said his insurance company
wouldn't allow it as they could be liable - or something like that.

JACUSTOMER-xpsaxtp2- :

I'm prepared to have a go at trying to trace through the wills. It's not clear
to me: am I only interested in the wills of the executors through the
generations or also the wills of any of the countless beneficiaries in any of
the wills? I'm happy to hunt down the remaining execs wills and think I have a
good chance of doing so, [I'm starting by googling to see if\where any were
probated - and then viewing them]. Then maybe I can place the lot before a
lawyer and say go for it. The problem is that the original piece of opening
legal advice I had cost $555 for 1 hour, and I don't want to end up spending say
$5000 legal fees for something that's only worth say $10,000 tops. Do you know
any way I can get an indication of the likely property value without getting a
specific valuation? By the way, the council said that the fact that a building
was partly on the land would "strengthen my case".

christhelawyer :

I can see why you are cautious about money, because the value will not be great.
The easiest estimate would be be to get the value of the land next door (the
unimproved value) and find out the value per square meter, and then apply this
to this land. That is more or less what a valuer would do anyway. So if this is
say 210 square meters, then if the adjoining land is worth say $500 to $1000 per
square meter then this will be worth about 100,000 to 200,000. Probably not to
be sneezed at depending on the number of relatives who will want to share the
money though.

christhelawyer :

You will not find wills on google-you will need to find dates of death and the
place of death and start searching the probate records in the High Court. All
this research is better done by you in any event. You will need to trace what
the wills actually say, because not all the descendants would inherit. If there
are too many descendants this could really dilute the pool, but I expect that
you have a reasonable idea of how many estates you are looking at.

christhelawyer :

Let me know if you have further issues-I will be off line for about an hour

JACUSTOMER-xpsaxtp2- :

How do I detect which descendants in the various wills would inherit? Would it
be where the will bequeaths using a general landed property term like "real
estate"? By the way, I recall that my oldest living relative once said that when
my original ancestor died all the members of the family except my branch got
paid out then by being given farm land, etc. The inference was that it is only
our branch that wasn't. I wonder whether the court would now accept a written
affadavit from him to that effect. If so, as mentioned in my original notes I
have the recently confirmed similar case where DTZ confirmed the link from my
grandfather [son of the original owner] down to me and the 4 others in our
branch - a small enough group to be worth sharing with.

christhelawyer :

You will need to look at the wills and decide on each one how the estate is
passed on. There is no real alternative to this unfortunately. Often wills have
specific bequests and then a residue. in this case where no one remembered the
land existed it would fall into the residuary estates. The affidavit would not
be very useful except if the gaps were too big and you had to go to court

A piece of New Zealand land was owned by my great-grandfather…

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