Part 5Duties relating to real estate agency work
Receipt of money and audit of accounts
122Duty of agent with respect to money received in course of business
All money received by an agent in respect of any transaction in his or her capacity as an agent must be paid to the person lawfully entitled to that money or in accordance with that person’s directions.
Despite subsection (1), if an agent is in doubt on reasonable grounds as to the person who is lawfully entitled to the money, he or she must take all reasonable steps to ascertain as soon as practicable the person who is entitled and may retain the money in his or her trust account until that person has been ascertained.
Pending the payment of any such money, the money must be paid by the agent into a general or separate trust account at any bank carrying on business in New Zealand under the authority of any Act and may not be drawn upon except for the purpose of paying it to the person entitled or as that person may in writing direct.
No money to which this section applies is available for payment of the agent’s debts, nor may it be attached or taken in execution under the order or process of any court at the instance of any of the agent’s creditors.
Nothing in this section takes away or affects any just lien or claim that an agent who holds money to which this section applies has against the money.