{"id":404351,"date":"2026-04-30T04:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/404351\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T04:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:14:08","slug":"woman-who-nearly-lost-home-in-mistaken-identity-case-receives-1000-from-stranger-for-legal-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/404351\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman who nearly lost home in mistaken identity case receives $1000 from stranger for legal fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

She borrowed $1735 from her family to pay for her legal fees, then sent Francis multiple requests to reimburse her legal costs. <\/p>\n

Francis refused to pay and told her \u201call appropriate steps were taken\u201d before the case of mistaken identity was discovered.<\/p>\n

Now, a complete stranger who said he believes in \u201cfair play\u201d has sent Dwyer $1000 towards her legal fees.<\/p>\n

Derek Eastman, 56, described himself as a \u201cvery quiet and laidback\u201d person who \u201clikes his solitude\u201d. <\/p>\n

When he read about the circumstances that led to Dwyer almost losing her home<\/a>, it \u201cupset\u201d him. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am a homeowner myself and I would be pretty devastated if somebody came along and said, \u2018Hey, I am taking your house and there\u2019s nothing you can do about it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"PalmerstonPalmerston North woman Kim Dwyer’s home was almost sold out from underneath her after a severe case of mistaken identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot even begin to think about how much stress that would have put Kim under.\u201d <\/p>\n

Eastman said he experienced his share of \u201cbloody tough\u201d financial struggles when he was in his 20s and 30s. <\/p>\n

He said he was now neither \u201crich\u201d nor \u201cbroke\u201d but he had the means to help Dwyer out because he earned a good living and did not have any dependents. <\/p>\n

Eastman contacted Dwyer through the Herald and sent her $1000 to help cover part of her legal costs.<\/p>\n

Dwyer told the Herald she ideally wanted Francis to pay her legal fees and initially declined Eastman\u2019s money, but eventually felt she was \u201csilly\u201d to not take up his offer. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was obviously like, \u2018Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, this is so amazing\u2019… and I told him I\u2019d keep him updated.\u201d <\/p>\n

After the initial Herald story was published, Dwyer said she \u201cloved\u201d reading social media comments from members of the public voicing their support for her. <\/p>\n

Multiple people have advised her to take her case to the Disputes Tribunal, which she is considering looking into if it helps her pay Eastman his $1000 back.<\/p>\n

Dwyer said she will be legally changing her name to include a middle name so the same mistake is not made in the future. She said it would cost her $170 to do so.<\/p>\n

Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She borrowed $1735 from her family to pay for her legal fees, then sent Francis multiple requests to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20299,74,15408,138,1121,802,10537,12470,2082,71,19724,6101,1345,10053,18558,78,6712,42583,5836,112399,208350,11692,111,139,529,69,6292,14901,121777,10536,24002,21419,1316,1299,1354],"class_list":["post-404351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-20299","tag-after","tag-almost","tag-business","tag-case","tag-costs","tag-else","tag-fees","tag-for","tag-from","tag-given","tag-good","tag-home","tag-house","tag-identity","tag-in","tag-legal","tag-liquidator","tag-lost","tag-mistaken","tag-mistook","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-palmerston","tag-receives","tag-samaritan","tag-someone","tag-stranger","tag-towards","tag-when","tag-who","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404351","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=404351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}