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Cross lease ownership can feel much like owning an ordinary house until somebody wants to change the building. Legally, however, a cross lease is quite different from owning a separate fee simple lot.

Each owner usually owns a share of the underlying land together with the other owners, while separately holding a long-term lease of their particular flat.

Cross leases have an impressive ability to turn an ordinary garage into a complicated legal issue. A purchaser looks at the flats plan, notices the garage is missing and suddenly there is talk of a defective flats plan, surveyors, neighbour consent and an expensive cross-lease update.

Sometimes that concern is justified. But not always.

A detached garage or other independent structure situated within an area allocated for the exclusive use of one cross-lease owner does not automatically make the flats plan defective simply because it is not shown on the plan.

Turner Hopkins is very proud to have now been selected as one of the few New Zealand law firms to become an accredited partner of JustFund, Australasia’s leading family law litigation finance provider.

The JustFund model allows clients of our firm to obtain loans specifically designed to meet their legal expenses.  This means that clients can now obtain legal representation without any upfront cost.  Payment of the legal fees is ultimately met from the relationship property recovered once settlement of any disputes and all relationship property matters has been resolved.

If someone owes you money and you have a court judgment, the judgment does not always mean you will be paid straight away. The judgment says the money is owed. If the debtor still does not pay, you may need to take another step to collect the money.

A garnishee application is one way to do this. It can be used when another person, business, bank, or organisation owes money to the debtor or is holding money for the debtor. You can ask the Court to order that third party to pay the money to you instead of paying it to the debtor.

In property transactions, there is often pressure to move quickly. Opportunities present themselves as solutions - a structure that works when others do not, a pathway to lending that appears just within reach, or an approach that promises to “get the deal across the line.”

But where that pathway depends on information being incomplete, recharacterised, or withheld, the risk is not commercial. It is legal. And increasingly, it is criminal.