Norling Law

Norling Law We resolve commercial disputes and get business owners paid promptly!

Most shareholder disputes don’t begin with a dramatic falling out.They begin with a decision made without consulting the...
29/09/2026

Most shareholder disputes don’t begin with a dramatic falling out.

They begin with a decision made without consulting the other shareholders.

Or a direction the company took that one director didn’t agree with. Or a dividend that wasn’t paid when it should have been.

By the time someone calls a lawyer, the relationship has usually been breaking down for months, sometimes years. The dispute has a name by then, but it’s been in motion for a long time.

What we see consistently: the earlier a dispute is properly framed and specialist advice is taken, the more options remain available. Negotiated buyouts, mediation, structured exits, Court-ordered remedies. Those options exist, but they require time and a clear legal position to work with.

The longer a dispute runs without structure, the fewer of those pathways survive.

If there is tension among your shareholders right now, even if it feels manageable or unlikely to escalate, it is worth understanding your legal position before it does.

We work on shareholder disputes, not shareholder agreement drafting. If you’re in a dispute, or can see one forming, that’s the work we’re built for.

Book at norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

Insolvency appointments are running at their highest year-to-date level since 2011, and construction alone has shed over...
09/09/2026

Insolvency appointments are running at their highest year-to-date level since 2011, and construction alone has shed over 500 companies in the past year. For law firms without a dedicated insolvency or restructuring practice, that volume is starting to show up as referral pressure: clients with matters that need specialist handling, arriving faster than usual.

We work with a number of firms on exactly this basis, taking on insolvency, restructuring, and director-risk matters as a referral partner rather than a competitor for the firm's broader relationship. That includes shareholder disputes that surface out of a distressed business, tax debt negotiations that sit outside a general practice's usual scope, and formal insolvency processes that need a team who does this work daily.

For firms managing an increasing number of these referrals, having a specialist partner who can pick up a matter cleanly, and hand it back cleanly, matters more this year than it has in some time.

If your practice is fielding more insolvency-adjacent matters than usual, we're glad to talk about how a referral relationship might work.

Get in touch: norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

Last June, personal finance research site MoneyHub published a comprehensive guide to IRD tax debt for New Zealand busin...
07/09/2026

Last June, personal finance research site MoneyHub published a comprehensive guide to IRD tax debt for New Zealand business owners, developed in partnership with our tax debt negotiation team.

The guide walks through how a missed GST or PAYE payment compounds through penalties and use-of-money interest, why GST and PAYE are treated as trust money with personal liability implications for directors, and what options exist before IRD's enforcement powers come into play.

It's the kind of detail we work through with clients directly, now available as a standalone resource for any business owner wanting to understand their position before picking up the phone.

Read the guide: https://www.moneyhub.co.nz/tax-debt.html

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

New Zealand's construction sector lost 551 companies over the past year, and the fourth quarter of 2025 recorded the hig...
04/09/2026

New Zealand's construction sector lost 551 companies over the past year, and the fourth quarter of 2025 recorded the highest quarterly failure rate since sector tracking began in 2022. Construction now accounts for roughly 30% of all liquidation appointments nationally, a disproportionate share for an industry that makes up a much smaller slice of the economy.

Consolidation of this scale rarely happens cleanly. When a construction business closes, unwinds, or restructures, the people left holding unresolved positions are often co-owners: shareholders who built the business together and now disagree about what happens next. Should the remaining assets be split, sold, or wound down. Does one shareholder buy the other out. Who carries what's left of the liability.

These situations are rarely about who's right. They're about which options are still realistically open, given the state of the business, the relationship between the parties, and how much time is left before a decision gets made for them by creditors or the market.

We work with shareholders navigating exactly this: not adjudicating blame, but mapping the practical options that remain (buyout, wind-down, restructuring, or a negotiated exit) and helping clients choose the one that protects their position.

If your business is part of a shareholder relationship under this kind of pressure, it's worth understanding your options before others decide for you.

Talk to us:
norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

5 Signs Your Business Has an IRD Problem1. GST or PAYE payments are being delayed to cover other costs.2. You've stopped...
02/09/2026

5 Signs Your Business Has an IRD Problem

1. GST or PAYE payments are being delayed to cover other costs.
2. You've stopped opening or responding to IRD correspondence.
3. Use-of-money interest and penalties are growing faster than you're paying them down.
4. You're relying on next month's revenue to cover last month's tax.
5. You haven't discussed a repayment arrangement with IRD, or your accountant, in the last quarter.

Any one of these on its own isn't unusual. Together, they tend to describe a business heading toward a harder conversation that needs to be had.
GST and PAYE are collected on behalf of the Crown, which changes the risk profile for directors specifically, not just the business.

If this sounds familiar, we're happy to talk through the options.

Book a consultation: norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

Budget 2026 added a further $15 million a year to IRD's debt-compliance activity, on top of increases in Budget 2024 and...
31/08/2026

Budget 2026 added a further $15 million a year to IRD's debt-compliance activity, on top of increases in Budget 2024 and Budget 2025. That's the third consecutive year of investment in the same direction, not a one-off enforcement push.

The effect is already visible in the numbers. IRD referred 650 cases to the Court for liquidation orders this year, a 49% increase on the year before. Only 13.1% of the country's overdue tax debt sits under an active repayment arrangement, despite IRD setting up over 200,000 instalment arrangements.

Most businesses carrying tax debt are not engaging with it proactively, and the funding increase suggests IRD's patience for that is shortening.

The practical takeaway for a business owner watching from the outside has less to do with IRD becoming more aggressive for its own sake, and more to do with the gap between manageable arrears and formal enforcement closing faster than in previous years. A repayment conversation that would once have been routine now needs to happen sooner to land the same way.

If your business is carrying IRD debt and hasn't reviewed its position against this year's enforcement settings, that's worth doing before IRD does it for you.

Talk to us
https://norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

Only 13.1% of New Zealand's overdue tax debt currently sits under an active repayment arrangement. The rest is either un...
30/08/2026

Only 13.1% of New Zealand's overdue tax debt currently sits under an active repayment arrangement. The rest is either unmanaged or being handled informally, which tends to be the more expensive path once penalties and use-of-money interest compound.

A formal arrangement with IRD isn't the only option, and it isn't always the right one. Depending on the position, a business might be better served by a structured compromise, a short-term restructuring, or, in some cases, an orderly wind-down that protects the director personally.

The right option depends on the numbers, not on which one feels least uncomfortable.

We help business owners work out which path actually fits their position.
Book a consultation: norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

When your business collects GST from customers or deducts PAYE from wages, that money is held on behalf of the Crown, no...
29/08/2026

When your business collects GST from customers or deducts PAYE from wages, that money is held on behalf of the Crown, not the business.

Continuing to trade while unable to pay those amounts is different, legally, as compared to falling behind on a supplier invoice. It can expose directors to personal liability under the Companies Act 1993, separate from whatever happens to the company itself.

This is often the point business owners misunderstand: the tax debt itself is usually the smaller problem. The bigger one is the decision, often made under pressure, to keep trading with money that was never the company's to spend.
If you're unsure where your business sits against this, we can help you look at it clearly.

Book a consultation: norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

Three weeks ago, we flagged that company liquidations had reached a 16-year high, the sharpest increase since 2010. The ...
28/08/2026

Three weeks ago, we flagged that company liquidations had reached a 16-year high, the sharpest increase since 2010. The month since hasn't changed that picture; it's confirmed it.

The latest monthly data from insolvency practitioners shows year-to-date appointments at their highest level for the first seven months of any year since 2011. July alone recorded 299 formal insolvency appointments, ahead of both July 2025 and July 2024.

The composition matters as much as the volume here. More than four-fifths of July's appointments were for liquidation, not administrations or receiverships aimed at rescue. That split tends to reflect businesses reaching a decision point later than they needed to, once restructuring options have already narrowed.

Brent has spoken previously about fielding upwards of 160 consultations a month from business owners in exactly this position. The common thread is rarely bad luck. Usually, it comes down to timing.

Improving macro conditions, easing inflation, rising job ads, don't change this quickly. Insolvency data moves on a lag, and a business that used up its reserves surviving the past two years don’t get them back just because confidence indicators are turning.

If your business is watching this from a position of uncertainty, the conversation is more useful now than it will be once the numbers move again.

Book a consultation: norlinglaw.co.nz/book-a-consultation/

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

The fifth in our series of patterns we see from business owners who call us needing insolvency advice: directors sign pe...
17/08/2026

The fifth in our series of patterns we see from business owners who call us needing insolvency advice: directors sign personal guarantees without full understanding. The company fails. They then discover the limits of “limited liability.”

In theory, incorporating a company gives you limited liability. In practice, many directors do not operate on that basis.

Landlords want a PG. Banks want a PG. Equipment finance wants a PG. Trade suppliers above a credit limit want a PG. Each one, signed alone, feels manageable. Years later, when the company fails, all those guarantees crystallise at once.

Worse yet, directors sign terms that include guarantees without reading and understanding the full extent of their exposure. We have sat with directors who genuinely thought they had limited liability, who couldn’t give us a list of PGs signed. The total personal exposure was often a multiple of their net wealth.

The maths can be brutal. A five-year commercial lease PG can be hundreds of thousands. A bank PG is often unlimited. And the family home is usually in the firing line, sometimes with proper spousal consent, sometimes without.

TIP: Get advice on spousal consent to personal guarantees.

We understand it. Refusing to sign a PG can cost you the deal. Landlords won’t lease, banks won’t lend, suppliers won’t extend credit. In the early years, signing them can often be the only way to operate.

Another issue: PGs are signed, then the director resigns (or is removed), and the company continues to trade for years, but the guarantee remains. The demand that follows can come as quite a surprise.

So what should you actually be doing?

Read what you are signing. The amount, the duration, the trigger, and what assets are exposed. Negotiate caps and sunsets; many PGs can be capped at a dollar amount, limited to a term, or released when the company hits a financial threshold. Many directors never ask.

Keep a register. Every PG you sign, with counterparty, amount, and trigger. If you resign as director, seek to deal with PGs and remove or renegotiate them before you lose control of the company.

The directors we never see in distress aren’t the ones who refused to sign. They are the ones who signed knowing exactly what they were on the hook for, and managed the exposure deliberately.

Norling Law is a specialist Litigation and Dispute Resolution Law firm with a core focus on Insolvency and Restructuring.

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