It is with great sadness that we advise our clients and business friends that Desmond Boyle passed away peacefully earlier this month.

Mr Boyle was one of the firm's former partners, when it was known as Cavell Leitch Pringle and Boyle. Before joining Cavell Leitch in 1969 he was a Crown Solicitor in Nelson.

Although he retired several years ago, Mr Boyle retained his strong links with the firm and has continued to act as a trustee for some of his significant clients.

Des was a very kind and caring person. All who worked with him respected his sound judgment and valued his approachable and supportive nature. He will be sadly missed by the many people whose lives he touched.

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to his children and extended family.

Written by some of Santa's helpers

As you all know, boys and girls, Cavell Leitch advise the most important clients. This includes a certain Christmas celebrity! Every year, about this time, Santa needs a little bit of last-minute advice, which we are always happy to provide. Here is a summary of the advice he needed this year.

Santa has been delivering goodies to the boys and girls of New Zealand for a very long time.  He comes every Christmas, and he loves it here.  Lately, he and Mrs Claus have been thinking about purchasing a permanent home in Queenstown.  They want a quiet place to be, during the off-season. However, Santa and Mrs Claus are not New Zealand or Australian citizens.  They are, of course, citizens of the North Pole.  Also, Santa will not have time to organise the purchase of a property before Christmas. 

Will the change to foreign ownership of homes, coming into effect in January, affect Santa?

Our Queenstown team were able to advise that yes, the changes will affect Santa.  This is because anyone who is not a permanent resident or New Zealand citizen will need Overseas Investment Office (OIO) consent to purchase an existing home in New Zealand.

Read more here.

Written by Mike Gibbs - Solicitor (Resource Management) 

Changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) on 18 October 2017 have affected how some basic resource consents applications are processed. The intent is to speed up processing, reduce time and expense to applicants, and to free up councils to focus on more complex applications.

One such change is the introduction of “permitted boundary activities”.  A permitted boundary activity is one that:

1. would normally require a resource consent because it triggers a district rule relating to the distance of a structure from the boundary or the dimensions of a structure in relation to its distance from the boundary;
2. relates to a boundary that is not a public boundary, such as a road, river, lake, coastline or reserve;
3. does not breach any other district plan rules; an
4. has the approval of any affected neighbour.

Read more here.

Written by James Leggat - Solicitor (Property)

Weeks of speculation came to a close on 19 October 2017 when Winston Peters announced that New Zealand would soon see a change in Government. For better or for worse, the new Government has quite publically intended to implement tighter restrictions on overseas buyers. A lot is still not yet known about what these restrictions might entail. However, as the year begins to wrap up we have a great opportunity to assess what we know so far.

Press releases by both major media outlets show two of the major Labour Party campaign policies to ban foreign speculators and tax (domestic) speculators are expected to pass into law early in the new year.

Read more here.

Written by Chantal Morkel - Associate (Business) 

Like many other countries, New Zealand has an ageing population. This is giving rise to an increasing number of people moving into retirement villages.

Buying a unit in a retirement village is different to buying your own home, and there are a number of factors to consider when making a decision to move to a retirement village.

Read more here.

Written by Rebecca Collins - Associate (Trusts and Estates) 

Wills are very important documents. The law recognises this by imposing very strict requirements on how they are to be signed.

For a Will to be considered valid, it must be signed by the willmaker, or at the direction of the willmaker, in the presence of two witnesses. Those witnesses must both acknowledge in writing that the willmaker signed the will, or directed someone to sign the will, in their presence, and while the Willmaker was also still with them. The witnesses to a Will must not receive any benefit under the Will, nor be married to anyone who receives a benefit under the Will.

Read more here.

We would like to advise our clients that we have recently made a change to the Records Management section of our Terms of Engagement.

Our firm is moving towards a digital office and as a result of this we will aim to reduce the amount of paper we use in the office, this means storing client files electronically.

You can view these changes on the Terms of Engagement page on our website here.