Succession and Partition

Te Ao Hou, October 1956, Page 10

Succession and Partition The position was, then, that much Maori land after passing through the Court was held by a number of owners each individually, with a defined share. Before long it became necessary to provide for some method of succession to a deceased owner to be found. For this purpose the Court was given power to act and it was laid down that succession (to land interests) should as nearly as possible be in accordance with Maori custom. This meant that, generally speaking, succession was in favour of all children equally so that as time went by shares got smaller and smaller as the number of owners became larger. The Court also, at quite an early stage, was given power to partition land—that is to cut out the interests of different people or groups of people into different parts, each with a separate title. Over the country the Court has made many thousands of partitions, resulting in pieces of land of all shapes and sizes which today are not easily handled for practical use. There are for example, the “fiddle-string” groups of sections, perhaps several miles long and only a chain or two wide. We tend to wonder these days why a piece of land should be cut up into such fantastic shapes. There is usually an explanation. The “Fiddlestring” type of partition was designed to give the owners of each section a part of each sort of land in a block. Thus the section might run from the sea back into the hills, enabling the owners to have access to the sea for sea food, to have some flat land for residence and cultivation, and some hill country for forest foods and timber.