A family dispute
The Herald reports on a very sad family dispute. I wouldn’t normally comment on it, but there was one line that got me going a bit.
The background:
Sympathetic well-wishers have contributed nearly $25,000 to help two young girls whose mother was killed in a drink-drive smash, but the money is sitting untouched in a bank account because of a family dispute.
It was raised on the Givealittle fundraising site for Brooke and Caitlin Todd 10 months ago.
The girls’ mother, TV3 graphic artist Rebecca Todd, was killed by a drink-driver just before Christmas last year.
Donations flooded in for the two girls, who were seriously injured in the crash.
Friends set an initial goal of $5,000 to “support the family and get these beautiful girls back on their feet”. But the money kept pouring in, eventually reaching $24,548.
The webpage said the extra would go to the girls’ family to “set them up for the future”.
Brooke and Caitlin’s father Richard Todd is in a dispute with Rebecca’s brother-in-law, Shane Newlove, about which trust account the money should be transferred to.
Richard, who separated from Rebecca 15 months before the crash, has custody of his daughters – now aged 7 and 6 – and gave up work to care for them after the accident.
He wants the money put into an independent trust.
But after Rebecca died, her two sisters and a cousin set up a trust called the Brooke and Caitlin Trust, with Rebecca’s siblings and cousin as trustees.
Newlove wants the money to go into that trust.
Reasonable people can disagree on who should be the trustees etc. It is sad they can’t agree among themselves.
Newlove said he wanted the money put into the trust that his wife, Rebecca’s sister, had set up.
“We want to quietly grow those funds throutgh memorial dinners and other fundraisers,” he said.
“Who better to be guardians of the girls’ future than their mother’s sisters?”
Umm, the father?
This is the quote that just got my gander up a bit. I am sure all are operating out of love for the girls’, but to proclaims the aunts as a better guardian that the actual father (who has custody and has given up work to care for them) seems arrogant.