Oranga Tamariki<\/a> Act, and before a substantial amendment to the level of supervision of time in state care.<\/p>\n![\"As]()
As a teenager Roger’s* parents considered they could not control him. He was placed in state care, in a group family home, where he claimed to have been sexually and physically abused. Illustration \/ Paul Slater<\/p>\n
Roger left state care in the late 1980s, after which he had \u201cperiodic, serious criminal trouble\u201d, leading to four terms of imprisonment, Judge Moss said.<\/p>\n
He later moved overseas with a girlfriend, and gained work but got into difficulties. <\/p>\n
His father offered support, including getting him back to New Zealand, Judge Moss said.<\/p>\n
After Roger was back in his parents\u2019 care, his mother left the family home and, for a short time, had almost no contact with her son as she distanced herself from the community in which she had lived.<\/p>\n
Reconnection after mother left family home<\/p>\n
The pair later reconnected, and Roger married and achieved some success.<\/p>\n
Judge Moss said he ran a business \u201cwhich may have been a brothel\u201d, or perhaps a high-end escort agency, which brought Roger and his partner a degree of material comfort. <\/p>\n
However, his mother was unhappy and would not visit her son, whose marriage gradually eroded and ended. <\/p>\n
He had children from a subsequent relationship, which led to a form of reconciliation with his mother, but the bonds were not close, Judge Moss said.<\/p>\n
Roger was then the victim of a late-night attack that left him with a serious head injury, from which he took a long time to recover and he \u201creadily agreed\u201d he did not manage this wisely, Judge Moss said.<\/p>\n
His mother had been supported by her siblings after her marriage ended. In the final years of her life, the brother to whom she left the bulk of her estate was more involved in her care, and increasingly took responsibility for supporting her.<\/p>\n
Judge Moss said three years before her death, Roger\u2019s mother, who had left her estate to two charitable organisations, created a new will, which left 90% to her brother, 10% to a charity and nothing to her other siblings or son. <\/p>\n
Judge Moss was ultimately satisfied that Roger\u2019s mother owed him a moral duty, and that he needed support and maintenance. <\/p>\n
She noted the lack of significant challenge to either of those propositions and that it was likely Roger\u2019s mother had wished for more from him than she received.<\/p>\n
Son acknowledged distress caused<\/p>\n
He acknowledged his actions had caused her distress, but Judge Moss said criminal offending had \u201crarely justified a refusal to make provision\u201d. <\/p>\n
She said the latter offending was in the context of residual effects of head injury. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf anything, the ongoing adversity from the head injury strengthens [Roger\u2019s] claim for support rather than enhancing the evidence related to disentitling conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, she was not satisfied that there was \u201cdisentitling conduct or character\u201d and in her view, the claim established a breach of moral duty.<\/p>\n
The 10% bequest to the charitable organisation remained unchanged.<\/p>\n
Unsworth told NZME an appeal hearing was set for the High Court<\/a> at Wellington in July.<\/p>\n*Names have been altered in accordance with statutory reporting guidelines designed to protect vulnerable people in Family Court proceedings.<\/p>\n
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ\u2019s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His uncle defended the claim, asserting \u201cdisentitling conduct\u201d by his nephew. Lawyer Glenn Mason, acting for the uncle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[52249,24744,44969,10779,1558,1977,1349,3588,638,2109,5830,71,19724,101,3025,30510,111,43,139,69,1118,105531,2122,4499,22639,1077,61,128729,5977,1533],"class_list":["post-341175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-52249","tag-amount","tag-aunt","tag-awards","tag-been","tag-charity","tag-court","tag-cut","tag-estate","tag-family","tag-fought","tag-from","tag-given","tag-left","tag-most","tag-mothers","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-originally","tag-share","tag-small","tag-son","tag-successfully","tag-to","tag-uncle","tag-which","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}