Why you should choose Carlile Dowling for rural property legal advice

Our experienced primary industry lawyers will help you navigate your way through the rural property, commercial, trusts, and associated regulatory issues and paperwork that are part of the rural landscape safely, and in a stress-free and timely manner. Our Napier-based team makes rural property transactions seamless by expertly guiding you to a successful outcome. 

Our Napier-based primary industries team is lead by Paul Morgan. Paul has degrees in agricultural science and law. He brings years of experience working for Lancorp, then managing a farm, rural banking and as a rural issues lawyer to bear on your concerns. You will not find a better experienced rural lawyer  to discuss, understand and work through your issues than Paul.  Others in the team include Michael Morgan (Partner) and Teresa Mee (Senior Associate), who offer sound judgment borne of many years of experience, and Jessica Donald (Senior Solicitor), who was raised on the family farm and learned her craft as a rural solicitor in a small country practice before moving to Carlile Dowling.

Real Case Study

Client is parenting two children alone and farming land owned by a family trust. The trust owes another trust a significant sum, has multiple variations downs, and owns the farm, a cottage, and all farm plant, equipment, and livestock. The trust and the ownership structure were unfit for purpose. Client was negotiating the purchase of a portion of neighbouring land, to be purchased in partnership with two other trusts (one based overseas) and farmed with the new partners. Each partner required risk minimisation and a separation of their individual farming activities from the new partnership arrangements.

Carlile Dowling’s involvement

We helped the client with risk minimisation, the tricky negotiation of purchasing the adjoining land, sorting GST issues, restructuring the current land and business operation, and structuring and documenting the new partnership arrangements.  This required a new Trust, selling the current Trust’s property to the new Trust, incorporating a new farming company, selling the farming chattels to that company, distributing various debts owed to the current Trust, winding up the current Trust, novating debt, forming a new land-owning partnership, forming a farming partnership, selling a portion of the farm to the land-owning partnership, amalgamating land, obtaining new titles, a farm lease between the new Trust and the new farming company, and a farm lease between new land-owning partnership and farming partnership. We dealt with four other parties’ solicitors, a valuer, accountants in NZ and overseas, and mortgagees for the various parties, to explain and obtain agreement to the proposed structure, document all the transactions and attend to complex financing and security arrangements.

The client now has a safe, modern, and efficient structure to develop and protect family wealth for future generations.

Rural property law services we offer

Our primary industry lawyers can help you with rural property issues and negotiations, including:

• Buying and selling rural property including farms, orchards, vineyards, forestry, and lifestyle blocks 
• Compliance/Obligations
• Cutting rights
• Due diligence
• Easements 
• Emissions Trading Scheme 
• Equity partnerships
• Financing
• Forestry rights 
• Grazing agreements
• Joint ventures
• Livestock bailments 
• Resource consents
• Rural employment issues 
• Rural leases 
• Structuring, including companies, partnerships and trusts
• Subdivisions 
• Succession planning
• Water supply agreements
• And more. 

To explore other areas of Hawke’s Bay property law that we handle, click here.

Contact Our Rural Property Law Solicitors Today

If you need help with buying, selling, leasing, financing, or managing your Hawke’s Bay rural property, consult the team at Carlile Dowling. Our Napier-based rural property law solicitors have provided trusted legal advice to Hawke’s Bay and beyond for more than 130 years. 

Get in touch with us today by calling 06 835 7394 or contact us online.

To view our property conveyancing services, click here.