A woman who spent four years slowly paying off headstones for her mother and another relative was forced to cancel the long-awaited unveilings the day before they were due to take place after discovering the headstones were riddled with errors. 

The mistakes, which included misgendering her mother and misspelling a name and title, meant the family event was cancelled at the last minute. 

The woman later spent thousands on amending the memorials and incurred $800 in catering costs, a marae hire fee and petrol costs for the cancelled unveiling. 

After the headstone business refused to make amends the woman launched a claim in the Disputes Tribunal where she was awarded more than $5000. 

According to the recently released decision, which by law cannot identify either party, the woman began a payment plan for a headstone for a relative in 2019. The decision does not detail this relative’s relationship with the woman but it included the word grandfather on it. 

It was paid off by August 2019, but just two months later the woman’s mother also died. She instructed the business to hold the relative’s headstone and make one for her mother. 

But before it was fully paid off, the owner of the headstone business sold up to his niece. 

The woman made repeated requests to view the completed headstones, but was never given the opportunity. 

In June last year, the day before the unveiling of both headstones, she finally viewed both memorials. 

The headstones both misgendered her mother and misspelt her name, as well as referring to the other relative as a “godfather” instead of “grandfather”. Her mother’s memorial also used a different font to the one she had chosen. 

She contacted the headstone business, but they were “not receptive to her concerns”, the decision says. She arranged for a different stonemason to fix the errors. 

The tribunal proved that the engraving of both headstones occurred after the ownership of the business was transferred. While the former owner attended the hearing, the new owner, his niece, did not. 

Ultimately tribunal adjudicator Nicholas Blake determined the business breached their Consumer Guarantees Act obligations. It was only fair the woman was reimbursed for the $50 marae booking cost, $569 in food and $200 in wasted travel costs related to the unveiling event. 

The $2340 cost of refacing the headstones was also ordered. 

Finally, the tribunal also ordered compensation of $2000 for hurt and inconvenience, relying on a similar case in Canada where a business lost the ashes of a customer’s family member. 

Ethan Griffiths covers crime and justice stories nationwide for Open Justice. He joined NZME in 2020, previously working as a regional reporter in Whanganui and South Taranaki.