An Auckland lawyer has been censured and fined after “clumsily” drafting a “bizarre” will that accidentally granted him a woman’s entire estate.
Joseph Boaz Park was found guilty of “unsatisfactory conduct” by the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal last month, which put a spotlight on his “inexperience” in estate administration.
Park’s difficulties came in January 2020 when he was tasked with drafting a will for a 79-year-old woman from Korea.
A lawyer with 10 years of experience, Park, also from Korea, primarily worked in conveyancing and had limited experience in wills and estate management.
The woman gave Park a document with her wishes, stating that she would like her estate to be split between her two daughters.
Despite both speaking Korean, Park provided her with a will in English, and the woman signed it.
It said the woman would give "the whole of my estate both real and personal of whatsoever kind and nature and wheresoever situate including all property (if any) over which I may have some power of appointment unto my said solicitor".
When the woman died in April 2020, her two daughters grew suspicious of Park.
They accused him of taking advantage of their mother financially and trying to manipulate the will in his favour.
However, the tribunal found that Park was simply “inexperienced” in drafting wills and hadn’t been properly supervised by his employer.
While being interrogated over the charges, the tribunal said Park found the accusations “bizarre”.
However, the tribunal "found it bizarre that Mr Park laughed when it was pointed out that, on their construction, the will made him sole beneficiary, we regard that as quite natural for him. It was not something he had contemplated."
Through its investigation, the tribunal found that "despite the multitude of allegations made against him, we find nothing to call into question Mr Park’s character as a practitioner".
"His incompetence in drafting the will produced a bizarre outcome, but his conduct showed that his intentions were always to carry out what his client wanted.
“In short, Mr Park clumsily drafted a will with the result that it appeared to give the entire estate to him.”
The tribunal believed the outcome was “quite different from what he or his client intended”.
He was, however, found guilty of "unsatisfactory conduct" in two respects.
The tribunal found he showed "incompetence in drafting a will" and a "lack of courtesy towards a beneficiary in the estate he was administering".
The second charge was because the woman’s daughter had asked to communicate in English, but Park insisted on speaking in Korean.
For these, he was censured and ordered to pay a fine of $5000. He was also ordered to pay $12,504 as a contribution to the Standards Committee and $4578 to the New Zealand Law Society – which was ordered to pay $22,890 in Tribunal costs.
His practice was also ordered to be supervised.
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