The prenup, the secret debts, a young mother’s financial nightmare

Sunday, 26 July 2026

A young mum faces losing her house because of loans secured against the family home without her consent. The lender, a couple who run a family business, say they have to try and recover the $500,000 owed to them. In this cautionary financial tale there are no winners, writes Rob Stock.

There’s a sign in robust language on a young Auckland mother’s front door. It tells debt collectors and court bailiffs that her former partner no longer lives there.

It doesn’t stop them visiting, and popping their calling cards through the letterbox of the house. The mother has lived in the house - which she now fears she will lose - since 2019 with her two primary school-aged daughters.

She says her former partner incurred a debt of over half a million dollars against the property, which she did not know about, or consent to.

She says she would not have believed it possible, and wants to warn the public that it can happen - and hopes one day laws will be changed to prevent anyone taking out loans secured against homes without the other owners having to give consent.

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“I’ve got the most f….. up situation in the world, and it’s not my fault,” says the woman, who says she was subjected to violence by her partner, from whom she split in 2023.

“I just feel like I'm stuck in a prison, and everyone's fighting over what should be mine.”

The wrong kind of title

The woman met her now ex-partner around nine years ago.

The Sunday Star-Times is not identifying any of them to protect her and her young children. We’ll call the mother Justine.

In 2019 the couple bought a house together and put in place a contracting out agreement to protect the $240,000 Justine brought into the relationship to buy the home.

The property is likely worth around $900,000 to $1m, according to estimates given by Justine and her ex-partner, though a recent valuation has not been done. The mortgage is currently just over $400,000.

Like many others who are increasingly in de facto relationships and living together or buying property together before marriage, Justine thought a contracting out agreement would protect her as the main cash contributor of the purchase.

But it seems it might not be watertight.

A lender owed money by the ex-partner for a debt he incurred in the same year the couple bought the house says its claim is secured against his undisturbed half-share in the equity in the property.

If that turns out to be true, it trumps the contracting out agreement, and Justine fears her home would have to be sold to repay the lender.

Crucially, when the couple bought the house, they did so as “tenants in common”, not as “joint tenants”. Unlike joint tenants, who share ownership as a unified interest, tenants in common can hold specific, defined shares - in this case 50/50.

Tenants in common has benefits, like clearly delineating ownership. However, Justine says, if the property had been held with her ex-partner as “joint tenants”, the loans could not have been taken out without her agreeing to them.

Or, as the Citizen’s Advice Bureau puts it, with tenants in common, “any of the owners can transfer or mortgage their share of the house without the other joint owners’ agreement”.

Or, says Justine, their knowledge.

The debts

Unbeknown to her, not long after buying the property, her partner took out two loans secured against the property in order to start an auto repair business.

One was a debt secured against the property to a company called Commercial Factors.

That has now been paid off following the sale of the now-defunct business’ assets, and its caveat removed from the home.

But a second debt, with a company called Visavis, is now the focus of Justine’s current battle to hold onto her home.

Though only speaking to her former partner through a parenting app designed to regulate tone, even now Justine thinks the loan was taken out with honest intentions, even if she cannot forgive the secrecy.

“He's an overly optimistic guy when it comes to business and stuff, I think, and he just is like, ‘It's all going to work out’,” she says.

Her ex-partner told the Sunday Star-Times he believes she did know there were loans, but agrees she did not know their extent, nor did he tell her they were secured against his half share in the house.

“She just didn't know that she could be possibly liable,” he admits.

He thinks he didn’t tell her because he was optimistic at the time, and didn’t expect the business to struggle. He blames the Covid pandemic for the business’ woes, and interest mounting on the loans.

“Our opening day was the day of the week before lockdown,” he says.

The pandemic “really took the wind out of our sails”, he says. He thinks the business could have recovered, but he was not given enough time.

“I probably could have kept at it for another couple of years and made it work.”

But, he says: “That's the risk of business. If you look at the NZ Gazette, every day there's just so many companies going through it.”

Now the business is closed, and in the hands of liquidators since July 20, he’s looking for work.

The caveat

It wasn’t until June last year, when Visavis lodged a caveat on the home in an effort to force repayments, that Justine learned not just of the debt - but the ballooning interest that had been accruing over the last seven years.

The original loan was $150,000 in Sept 2019, but more money was lent which took it up to $350,000. Interest skyrocketed the debts to about half a million.

Justine was shocked, and thrust into a nightmare which has left her feeling bitter towards her ex, and the lenders.

“No one cares about me, they just look at that title and they go, ‘He's got half a house’, and they do whatever the hell they want. They're not considering me, they're not talking to me,” she says.

Visavis is a private company owned by an Orewa couple who run their investments through it and who, on the face of it, lack the sophistication of a commercial lender.

They say they thought they were helping a young man follow his dream of building a successful business.

They say they too are in financial stress - that they are owed about half a million dollars in capital and unpaid interest and say they’ve spent $100,000 in legal fees so far trying to recover what they claim is owed to them.

Justine has only been able to pay legal fees herself because her parents have gifted her the money to do so.

She’s made an offer to Visavis through her lawyer to settle the debt for $100,000, which she says is the most she can raise in a bid to keep the house as a single mother working full time.

She says she hasn’t had a response to the offer yet.

Until the debt is settled, she says a separation agreement with her ex-partner cannot be finalised so she can get on with her life.

The High Court has upheld Visavis’ right to maintain the caveat on the home, but acknowledged there was legal uncertainty over whether Visavis’s loan is secured by the undisturbed half share of the property or if the contracting out agreement preserves Justine’s equity that she brought to the relationship.

But, the judge who presided over the case expressed “significant sympathy” for the young mum.

‘We’re good people’

When the Star-Times visited the owners of Visavis, Mitchell and Lisa Kivits, at home, they were distressed.

“We can't sleep at night because we feel sick that we've just lost half a million dollars,” Lisa Kivits says.

Unlike a commercial lender, Visavis started out as a family run business. The company name came from its original use as an importer of reading sunglasses.

It no longer does that, and the couple are gifting remaining stock of sunglasses to raise money for hospice. The Kivits raised money for the Waitakere Baby Coffin Club after their son died in childbirth in 2020.

They had got to know the young mum’s partner through a family member, and decided to back him into launching a business.

“ We just were nice people that were trying to help,” Lisa says. “We’re good people.”

They were not experienced lenders. The paperwork for the loan was done by their lawyers. It did not occur to them there was even a possibility the borrower’s partner would not know about the loan.

“I tell Mitchell everything, and he tells me everything. Isn't that just normal?” Lisa says.

The first loan fell quickly into default, they say. They say they were lenient and did not enforce the loan despite the repeated failures to make payments. When the relationship soured, they claim Justine’s ex partner made threats that caused them to call the police.

They feel trapped into an expensive court battle, and regret ever having trusted the man.

“First I've heard of it,” the woman’s ex-partner told the Star-Times of the alleged threats.

He says he has not been contacted by police about the allegation.

Threat of losing her home

Now the optimism for the business has come to nothing, and the relationship is over, Justine is terrified she will lose her home through a forced sale.

The pair still own the home, but there is the substantial mortgage to Westpac.

If the house is sold, Westpac will get its money and the remainder would be split between the parting couple - but Visavis wants the ex-partner’s half share to help repay the money he owes it.

For the single mum, her fear is walking away without enough cash to again be able to buy a home in Auckland.

But, everyone is going to take a loss, her ex-partner says.

“There's not enough equity in there,” he says.

The young mother fears that is true.

Meanwhile, the $100,000 offer she has made to Visavis could allow her to keep the home, but it would mean a huge loss for the Kivits.

In making the offer her lawyer told Visavis: “The hardship that would be caused to my client would be significant. My client had no knowledge of the terms of loan agreement, no knowledge of the subsequent default.”

In the offer letter, her lawyer said: “The property is her family home and home of her two children, the only home her children have ever known. She has made a significantly greater contribution, and took steps to protect it with the contracting out agreement.”

‘It’s just the way it works’

Martin Haydon, a director of Commercial Factors in Ellerslie, Auckland - the other lender who was eventually paid - says while he “certainly felt for” the woman, in such cases it was up to the borrower to inform their partner, and discuss matters.

“It’s quite common, I’m afraid to say. It’s just the way it works,” he says.

Would the business change its policies to start ensuring the consent of the other owners of property against which its loans were secured?

“I can’t state categorically that we can, or will do that, I’m afraid,” Haydon said.

He was pleased Commercial Factors’ loan had been repaid in full, and the caveat removed from the young mum’s house.

“We needed to be repaid, and that’s the bottom line.”

Mothering under stress

The young mother says she has been under great stress fighting to try to keep her home while working full time, and trying to give her two children a happy home.

“It's hard,” she says.

“I work full-time. I've got a huge job. I'm studying in the evenings as well.”

She is in counselling, but she feels like she is near breaking point.

She was in trouble with the police in recent weeks for destroying the letterbox of the house in which her ex-partner was living, and is now on diversion for wilful damage.

“It's so f…… hard,” she says. “I'm so pushed. I'm so stressed.”