Rosina Tuhakaraina vacated the house, in a rural area near Tauranga, in the past fortnight following a second High Court ruling ordering her to get out.

Tuhakaraina had lived in the 3-bedroom home on its 1975sqm property since splitting up with former partner Ivan Jones, in 2018. They paid $545,000 for it. It’s presently valued by Homes.co.nz at $825,000.

After parting ways the pair agreed to purchase the property in a Separation and Relationship Property Agreement.

Tuhakaraina agreed that if she failed to make mortgage payments for two months or more she would be required to leave the property after getting four weeks’ written notice from the Trust.

Justice Mark Woolford issued a decision last month. Photo: David White / Stuff.

Tuhakaraina paid just $6304 of her $218,000 and had not made a payment since March 20, 2020.

The Trust served notice on her to leave the property in March 2022 and September 2022. Tuhakaraina stopped responding to correspondence in May 2022.

The Trust couldn’t sell the property without her agreement, so in November 2022 began court action to force her out.

In the High Court at Tauranga in June last year Tuhakaraina told Justice Mark Woolford that Jones was a very wealthy man who could afford to gift her the house, while she was on a benefit and her whānau had “nowhere else to go and would end up living on the street”.

Justice Woolford said Tuhakaraina had not presented a reasonable ground of defence and there was no reasonable explanation for her delay.

He acknowledged that if Tuhakaraina and her whānau were relocated it would be stressful, but by failing to make her mortgage payments she had “effectively been living in the property for free for the past three years”.

Woolford noted that the Trust had given Tuhakaraina numerous opportunities to remedy the situation, and she had made promises to continue payment but then broke them.

He made the order that Tuhakaraina was to vacate the property by October 1, so it could be sold.

So last month Jones went back to court.

He sought a reduction of the court-ordered reserve sale price of $725,000 to $670,000, and also an order that she vacate the property by February 28.

Because Tuhakaraina had failed to comply with the earlier court order that she vacate the property, Jones also sought an order empowering the Police to remove her and any other occupiers from the property if they hadn’t left by February 28.

Justice Woolford declined to make that order, but in his written decision he reminded Tuhakaraina that the court could issue an arrest order if a court order was disobeyed.

Jones told Stuff on Friday that the issue had been settled, that Tuhakaraina had left the property and it had been sold.