family reunited with artefacts
Photo by Tristan Hooker
It was like finding a needle in a haystack. When a Public Trust client wished to return his late wife’s Japanese artifacts to her family in Japan, the staff at Public Trust went above and beyond their expected duties to track down the family, which the couple had lost touch with long before.
Public Trust provides a range of products and services including wills and estate administration. In this case, the client was a Personal Assist customer, meaning he had planned ahead to have Public Trust take care of his affairs.
The client had met and married his wife while living in Japan and the couple had subsequently emigrated to New Zealand. When his wife passed away, the client continued to live in their house and kept it exactly as it was, with her shoes at the front door where she left them.
His wife owned some very old and valuable family heirlooms, including books, paintings and a large collection of silk kimonos, some more than 100 years old. Each kimono had a corresponding black and white photograph of a family member wearing it.
The client had always wanted to return the artifacts to his wife’s family in Japan but had fallen out of contact with them all. When he moved into a residential village, Public Trust was tasked with organising his personal possessions. Among these possessions, they discovered the original immigration and legal documents for his wife, which detailed her next of kin in Japan.
Public Trust staff managed to contact a nephew in Japan and engaged the services of a translator, enabling them to discuss the process of returning the items to the family, who were the rightful owners of these valuable objects. They obtained an address, then insured and carefully wrapped all the items, which were shipped in two full pallets to a very grateful family in Japan.
“These items not only had sentimental value but had considerable monetary valuable as well,” says Graham Duston, the client’s Welfare Attorney.
“It was a long process to track down the wife’s family in Japan, which involved reaching out to the consulate here in New Zealand, connecting with contacts in Japan and trying to track down any correspondence in our client’s belongings. It was a very emotional situation.
“The Public Trust gets involved in the fabric of human life,” he says. “These situations are more than just looking after people’s money.
“In these situations, the ultimate test is, if this was a member of your own family, what would be a good outcome? If it was a member of my family, I’d be very happy if the same level of care and professionalism was extended.”