Woman displaced after losing her $2 million home in a 36-year family feud

Siblings, Virginia Woolf and Alwyn Kaye had their long-standing dispute finalized in a High Court in Auckland, New Zealand this year. The pair was fighting over a house.

Woolf wanted to sell the property that now amounts to $2 million. However, legal papers showed that the house actually belonged to her brother Kaye.

Justice Christine Gordon recently released judgment in Virginia Woolf and Alwyn Kaye’s family feud calling it "an unhappy case between a sister and brother both now in their 60s." The two were fighting over a house that Woolf had lived in for 36 years.

Gordon ruled that Woolf must pay her brother $273,165.01. She also added that the sibling would have to vacate the house within two months of the judgment.

For more on this story go to our Twitter account @amomama_usa. In November 1981, Kaye bought the three-bedroom house for $89,500.

He paid a deposit of $5000. The siblings' father, Noel Woolf, paid mortgage securities worth $3500 which Kaye said was a gift and not a contribution.

Woolf confessed that she hadn’t made any initial contribution to the purchase of the property. However, she claimed to have signed a guarantee in relation to the second mortgage.

This made her think she had an ownership interest in the property. In early March 1982, she moved into the property with two flatmates.

Each paid $45 a week while Woolf paid $55. She believed her payments were also a contribution towards her equity interest in the property but her brother only saw her as a tenant who was paying rent.

Kaye never lived in the house and in July 1982, he went to Canada where he now lives and works. Between 1983 or 1984, Woolf discovered papers that revealed that Kaye was the sole owner on the title of the property.

In January 1985, Woolf’s lawyer wrote to Kaye suggesting that he gift shares in the property to his sister and their mother, Violet Woolf. By 1988, Kaye had paid off the mortgages on the property, and his stopped having flatmates and making "rental" payments herself.

Their mother died in 2006 and their father in 2014, and neither of their wills mentioned the property. Ultimately, Gordon found that Woolf had no claim to the property and made the ruling for the house that now costs $2 million.

In other news, Brooktynn Blood along with several other churches and organizations are sponsoring families who were rebuilding after Hurricane Florence. Around 100 families were displaced from the Yale Park Apartments.

Blood said:

“It was important to follow the example of Jesus Christ and to help people. I can’t call myself a Christian and help people when I see them in need.”