Articles

Family Trusts

Purchasing a new home is an excellent time to consider forming a Family Trust. You can form a Trust at any time, but the purchase of a home is a cost-effective time to form a Trust, because the legal and bank requirements can be completed with the purchase of the house.

A Trust is created by Deed which sets out its powers and places obligations and responsibilities on its Trustees.Trusts can provide you with flexibility for the benefit of your family and protecting your assets.

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Building a House?

You’ve found the perfect site, finalised the plans and specifications, arranged your finance and your builder has now given you a building contract to sign, but you’re not sure what you should be looking at.

The important question is: Does the building contract accurately record the terms agreed with the builder? It is therefore important to read your contract carefully and ensure that you fully understand its terms and conditions.

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Warning! Farm Owner Liability

A Taranaki farm owner appealed to the High Court against his conviction and sentence on charges laid in relation to the discharge of dairy effluent.

The farm owner argued on appeal that he had put his employed sharemilker in charge of the effluent disposal system on the farm, and as no problem had been brought to his attention, then his sharemilker was responsible for the offending and not him.

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What is Bullying?

Many workplaces have a workplace ‘bully’; it might be the passive aggressive, or intimidating one, who is difficult to deal with, or who is constantly putting people down. Their behaviour however, must reach a high level of seriousness, and be ongoing, to be substantial grounds for taking disciplinary action against that person.

Often we have employer client’s being accused of ‘bullying’ their employees or asked to investigate their employees who are said to be bullying other work mates.

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Minimise your purchase risk with a LIM

When buying a property, you have the option of obtaining a Land Information Memorandum, commonly known as a “LIM”.

A LIM is issued by the Local Council (“Council”) and provides information that the Council holds on file about the property.

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