{"id":420194,"date":"2026-05-10T00:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T00:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/420194\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T00:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T00:47:10","slug":"supreme-court-denies-womans-appeal-bid-over-45-year-old-estate-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/420194\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court denies woman\u2019s appeal bid over 45-year-old estate claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, she sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court<\/a>, which recently released its judgment over her appeal bid and detailed the background to the case. <\/p>\n

A family farm, and claims of a broken promise<\/p>\n

In March 1976, Gibson\u2019s father, Lewis Wait, died, and Gibson\u2019s brother, Robert, had by then abandoned his university studies to run the family farm.<\/p>\n

The farm was owned in two half shares by their parents, Lewis and Nellie. <\/p>\n

Under Lewis\u2019 will, Nellie received a life interest in his half share, and Robert was to receive that share on her death, subject to his paying Gibson and their sister, Gaylene, in equal shares \u2013 a sum equal to one-sixth of the value of the estate as at the date of Lewis\u2019 death.<\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019 overriding objective was to make provision for the support and maintenance of Nellie, who was still relatively young, and his will provided for \u201ccomparatively little\u201d to go to the two sisters.<\/p>\n

Lewis had also settled the LH Wait Family Trust, with the beneficiaries his children and grandchildren, and in 2021, the trust made a capital distribution of $520,000 each to Gibson and her sister. <\/p>\n

But in 2016, Nellie had sold her own half share in the farm to Robert\u2019s family trust for $4.544 million plus GST, and most of the purchase price was forgiven by gift. <\/p>\n

Gibson says she learned about the transaction in 2021 and realised her father\u2019s promise, that Nellie would \u201clevel things up\u201d between the three siblings, had proved false. <\/p>\n

In August 2022, Gibson brought proceedings against the executor of Lewis\u2019 estate, Simon Makgill, under the Family Protection Act 1955. <\/p>\n

The High Court refused to extend time, finding the approximate 45-year delay was \u201cinexcusable\u201d.<\/p>\n

She appealed to the Court of Appeal, which refused her appeal, and she then sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

However, Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann and Justices Stephen K\u00f3s and Forrest Miller, did not \u201csee any appearance of miscarriage\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the lower courts had accepted that Lewis arguably had breached moral duty, they also noted that Gibson was content not to initiate proceedings for so long.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was despite [Gibson] knowing or unreasonably overlooking the fact she was to receive very little under her father\u2019s will and, on her case, knowing of the risk her mother would alienate her own half share of the farm or not follow through with the alleged promise made by Lewis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court noted that Gibson\u2019s claim appeared to be premised more on her mother\u2019s conduct and estate than her father\u2019s, and the Court of Appeal had highlighted that \u201cinsofar as [Lewis] and [Gibson] assumed that [Nellie] would level up the distributions, it was an unsound assumption\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see no error in these conclusions, and nor therefore in the concurrent findings below that the delay was inexcusable. It is therefore not necessary in the interests of justice to hear or determine the proposed appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was ordered to pay the second respondents in the appeal, her siblings, one set of costs of $2500.<\/p>\n

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So, she sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, which recently released its judgment over her appeal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[141347,6375,5432,1040,2741,1349,28428,127,638,2209,42,4507,25449,6093,6178,43,1523,117812,49478,312,24831,30246,1361,6035,40,38,41,39,8238,303,1533,1354,5816,6730],"class_list":["post-420194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-45yearold","tag-appeal","tag-between","tag-bid","tag-claim","tag-court","tag-denies","tag-despite","tag-estate","tag-father","tag-headlines","tag-late","tag-level","tag-little","tag-mother","tag-news","tag-over","tag-promised","tag-receiving","tag-says","tag-siblings","tag-supreme","tag-that","tag-things","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-under","tag-very","tag-will","tag-woman","tag-womans","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420194","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=420194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}