Lawyer allegedly took $190K from mother's estate

A lawyer allegedly bullied his own mother, who had dementia, into giving him power of attorney before later transferring $190,000 from her estate two days after she died.

"He’s never been clear about what he’s borrowed. His borrowing is pieces of paper that say IOU," his sister told the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal this week.

"My brother influenced my mother over many years. Manipulation is the only term that describes it. "

The lawyer, who has interim name suppression and has represented multiple high-profile international clients, appeared before tribunal charged with misconduct in relation to a trust fund he helped manage and how finances from late mother’s estate were distributed.

The Standards Committee, which is prosecuting the man on behalf of the New Zealand Law Society, alleged he transferred $190,000 in a series of payments from that estate just two days after his mother passed away.

The committee also alleges that in 2018 he transferred $200,000 from a family trust he was a trustee of to fund a business he owned that was facing going into receivership.

"Acute financial pressure prompted the practitioner to do what he did, contrary to his known duties as a trustee," standards committee lawyer Paul Collins told the tribunal.

Collins said the lawyer was motivated by significant financial stress and that allegedly transferring money from his deceased mother could only have benefited himself.

"Thinking ‘oh Mother wouldn’t have minded if I helped myself to $190,000′ is utterly self-serving," he said.

"The evidence is not marginal or in the shadowlands, there is strong evidence these improprieties occurred."

The lawyer’s sister was the first witness to take the stand. She told the tribunal she believed her brother had bullied their mother into removing her as power of attorney and assigned him that responsibility instead.

The woman was removed from her position as power of attorney in 2013 but her mother wasn’t assessed by a medical professional to determine whether she was mentally fit to make that change.

Two years later she was cognitively assessed and found to have dementia and declared incompetent.

After her mother’s death in 2018 the woman said her brother had no right to make a substantial transfer from her estate into his personal account.

"I am not about the money or the revenge. I’m about truthfulness and honesty and accountability. That’s my primary target and my brother has shown none of that," she said.

The woman said her brother had shown little transparency about the withdrawals from the family trust and she’d had to go to court to find out what had been happening.

The hearing was initially set down for three days but part-way through the first day, three of the five charges against the man were dropped and he admitted to the two charges of misconduct.

He said he made the transfers but denied any intention of dishonesty and said he’d simply been in a rush to settle the estate and communicated his intentions to the rest of the family poorly.

"It was honestly shambolic," he told the tribunal.

"It was totally inappropriate looking backwards … if I had my time over again I’d absolutely do it different."

The man said he was grieving heavily at the loss of his mother and wasn’t thinking clearly when he made the withdrawal from her account and that everything could have been explained if he’d simply asked to sit down with his sister.

"I should have said to her ‘I can’t do this, can we sit down and talk about this’. I didn’t, and that’s my bad," he said.

The man claimed his sister had gone into their mother’s house and removed documents that would have explained the transactions and helped him defend them. His sister strongly denied that allegation.

The man will face a penalty hearing before the same tribunal in the coming months.