Professor Nicola Peart

Drs (Leiden) LLM (Cape Town)

Nicola graduated from Leiden University with a law degree majoring in International Law. She won a scholarship to the University of Cape Town in 1977 and completed an LLM in African Customary Law. She was employed as a tutor and later a lecturer by the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town where she taught Roman Law, Private law and European Union Law. She immigrated to New Zealand in 1986. After a year of study at the University of Otago she took up a lectureship in the Law Faculty.

Recent publications:

• John Dawson and Nicola Peart (editors) The Law of Research - A Guide Otago University Press 2003: this book is a collaborative effort of 17 authors, principally from within the Faculty of Law. It aims to explain to members of the research community the key legal principles governing research in New Zealand.
• Nicola Peart, Margaret Briggs, Mark Henaghan, Jacinta Ruru, Shelley Griffiths, Andrew beck and Andrew Belcher Relationship Property on Death Thomson Brookers, Wellington, (2004): this book focuses principally on the application of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976, as amended in 2001, to marriages and de facto relationships ending on death.
• Peter Skegg, Ron Paterson, Joanna Manning, John Dawson, Nicola Peart and Warren Brookbanks Medical Law in New Zealand Thomson Brookers, Wellington, (2006). Nicola contributed three chapters.
• Nicola is also the General Editor and a contributing author of Brookers Family Law - Family Property Law to be published by Thomson Brookers, Wellington, in August 2007.
• Henaghan M and Peart N, “Relationship Property Appeals in the New Zealand Court of Appeal 1958-2008: The Elusiveness of Equality”, in R Bigwood (ed) The Permanent New Zealand Court of Appeal (2009) 99-149.
• Peart, NS, Equity in Family Law, in A Butler (editor) Equity and Trusts (2009) 1163-1227.
• Peart, N, New Zealand Report on New Developments in Succession Law (2010) 14.2 Electronic Journal of Comparative Law <http://www.ejcl.org/142/art142-3.pdf>.
• Briggs, M and Peart, N, “Sharing the increase in value of separate property under the Property (Relationships) Act 1976: a conceptual conundrum”, (2010) 24 New Zealand Universities Law Review 1-20.
• Peart, NS, “The Property (Relationships) Amendment Act 2001: a conceptual change” (2009) 39(4) Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 813-830.
• Peart, NS, “Can your trust be trusted?” (2009) 12(1) Otago Law Review pp 59-76.
• Peart, NS, “New Zealand’s Succession Law – Subverting reasonable expectations” (2008) 37(8) Common Law World Review 356-379.

Research Interests

Family Property and Succession Law, Medical Law

Contact Details

Tel 03 479 8859
Office: 10th Floor - 10C5
Email nicola.peart@otago.ac.nz