Man’s last bid for compensation fails

Press, 7 August 1982, Page 3

Man’s last bid for compensation fails

PA Wellington , A Lower Hutt man yesterday lost his last battle to recover some of more than $200,000 of private money he had to pay his wife under the old Matrimonial Property Act. A petition to Parliament asking for compensation for what he considered was incompetent law-drafting was declined by the House's Petitions Committee. Five years ago, Anthony

Fulton Reid was ordered by the courts to pay his wife a settlement including $200,000 cash, the divided proceeds of a $500,000 business he built up over 17 years from some old tools, machinerv. and $lOOO. After his case. Parliament changed the Matrimonial Property Act to say that separate property could no longer be divided. When Mr Reid took his petition to Parliament in May he said he had lost his

only means of. livelihood and five years of his working life "because of the incompetent drafting of an act which did not portray the intentions of Parliament and which could not be understood by those appointed to administer it." Before then. Mr Reid had taken appeals against the ruling through every legal recourse before he was finally turned dow-n by the Law Lords of the Privy Council in London.