Hope Rinehart Welker, a daughter of Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, has withdrawn from her siblings’ legal action over the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust,
the Adelaide
Daily Telegraph
reported.
Rinehart’s two eldest children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart, are seeking to have their mother removed as head of the family trust, which contains a 23.4% stake in Hancock Prospecting. The trust was scheduled to vest in September 2011, when Ginia turned 25, but Rinehart changed the date to 2068, the report noted.
The case has been under consideration in the New South Wales Supreme Court for 18 months, the
Daily Telegraph
article said.
Justice Paul Brereton accepted Welker’s withdrawal from the case and ordered that she be included with her mother and her younger sister, Ginia, as defendants.
Welker, who has split with her husband, lives in New York, the
Daily Telegraph
article said.
The Western Australian website
WAtoday.com.au reported
that days before initiating the legal action against his mother, John Hancock attempted to forge an “arrangement” with her without telling his sister.
Citing a series of e-mails filed as part of court documents in the case, the website reported that Hancock wrote to his mother that his sisters had “always been treated better anyway,” that “I doubt they will be capable of doing their own research on the matter” and that “I doubt the girls have the intellectual capacity to read the Income Tax act.”
Gina Rinehart contends she changed the vesting date of the trust because it would have rendered them liable for a substantial capital gains tax bill and lead to their bankruptcy. In trying to broker a deal with his mother, Hancock said he had researched tax issues and doubted that a large tax bill would result, the website reported. (Sources:
Daily Telegraph,
March 12, 2013; WAtoday.com.au, March 12, 2103.)
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