When does a relationship truly begin or end? And when does that relationship become like a marriage? For one woman, these were the defining questions of her life.
In September, an Auckland woman known only as Kathryn dropped and broke her glasses.
Without money to fix or replace them,
she visited the Work and Income office in Pt Chevalier to appeal for help.
The case worker pointed out a longstanding debt in her name. She owed the Ministry of Social Development an eye-watering $117,000.
The debt had been imposed after a conviction for relationship fraud in 2000 and had haunted her family for nearly two decades.
Kathryn received a grant for new glasses, but left the Work and Income office in tears of frustration, her youngest daughter Eloise* said.
She died two weeks later, aged 58.
"That debt was held over her right to the end," said beneficiary advocate Susan St John.
Until her death Kathryn had been adamant that she was innocent, and refused to pay back the debt. She was backed by a group of lawyers and advocates, including St John, who fought for her conviction to be overturned and her debt waived.
Kathryn was caught up in the most difficult area of the welfare system: defining when someone is in a relationship. When a relationship begins and ends, and whether it is "in the nature of a marriage" is a notoriously complex legal test.
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The complexity of the test and the discretion in applying it is significant because the legal consequences can be severe, as in Kathryn's case. She never recovered from the punishment of her conviction and her debt was so large it would have taken 113 years to pay it off at $20 a week.
Advocates had hoped that her story would be a landmark case which could lead to changes to the way beneficiaries' relationships were policed in the welfare system.
"I've had 33 years as a lawyer and worked in human rights, and she's one of the most shocking cases," said Frances Joychild QC, who represented Kathryn in court pro bono.
"She never had any other convictions for dishonesty. She was a very smart, intelligent, honest woman. And she never resiled from her anger at the injustice, the terrible injustice."
Her story was captured in a report for Child Poverty Action Group by Auckland lawyer Catriona MacLennan in 2016 (her name was changed to protect her and the family from an abusive ex-partner).
Her case shows that no welfare fraud case is straightforward and often has a long, tangled, back-story.
MacLennan's report said that Kathryn's misfortune evolved from the death of her fourth child, Robbie*, in 1989.
He died after being beaten by her partner at the time, Graeme Sperry. When she was told by a doctor at the hospital that Robbie was dead, she was not allowed near him so she clambered through a laundry chute into his ward and held his lifeless body.
Robbie was buried three days before Christmas.
"You can imagine what Christmas was like," Kathryn said later. "I bought four stockings instead of three."
She suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after Robbie's death. Child, Youth and Family took her three remaining children off her and said they would return them when she had a stable home life. A relationship could help, CYF told her.
When Kathryn took that advice and began a relationship with a man known as Mr E in the early 1990s, her children were returned from state care. But after she became pregnant, the couple broke up and she moved to a home in Wellsford with the children.
Mr E later told Work and Income that she had been claiming a benefit while they were in a relationship.
MacLennan's report called this an act of revenge. Her children had told Kathryn that Mr E - who she later discovered was a convicted paedophile - had sexually abused them. He was charged but acquitted of abusing her kids, then in turn reported Kathryn to Winz.
In 2000, she was charged with 26 counts of relationship fraud.
Whether Kathryn and Mr E were in a marriage-like relationship or were just friends was debated endlessly in civil and criminal courts and welfare tribunals.
There are hundreds of pages of court documents. But the key part of the Crown's evidence for a marriage-like relationship was that she had bought a house in Wellsford in Mr E's name. She explained that this was to hide her location from Sperry, her son's killer, who had been released from prison.
She lost her case and was sentenced to six months in jail. She was also told that she owed Winz $120,355.
Kathryn's story also highlights the ongoing, generational, impact of the penalties for welfare fraud and the debt it incurs. When the Supreme Court declined leave to hear her appeal, the judge remarked that her debt was so large she would never pay it off.
"Picture a big ball of wool with no beginning and no end," Kathryn said in 2016. "That's what it's like. Believe it or not, I live with it every day. It's like it only happened yesterday. It's never going to go away until everything's sorted, until my name's cleared."
Two of her daughters now want to continue the fight to clear their mother's name, although repeated appeals all the way to the Supreme Court have been shot down. They also want structural changes to the welfare system, especially in relation to relationships and debt recovery.
Reform in this area is being pushed by several large advocacy groups, who wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in November.
Their main goal is to see benefits individualised so that people who are in a relationship still get a benefit and are paid the same rate as a single person. That would remove the fraught process of deciding whether someone was in a relationship or not.
Little has changed in the three years since Kathryn's life was captured in MacLennan's report. She died without seeing any changes to the system which she felt was deeply unfair.
Successive Governments have resisted reforming the rules around relationships, possibly because allowing partners of earning people to get a full benefit is politically unpalatable.
The Coalition Government, which promised a "kinder" welfare system, is not convinced of the need for a change. It has made a vague promise to consider the relationship rules in its overhaul of welfare over the next four years.
The Ministry of Social Development said New Zealanders expected it to uphold a system which detected and prevented fraud, and it had a legislative duty to take all steps to recover debt.
A spokesman, George van Ooyen, said the ministry could write off debts which had been incurred in error or were not financially worth the cost of recovery, but it did not have the power to write off debt on the grounds of serious hardship.
While Kathryn's life was punctuated by unimaginable hardship, her family doesn't want her to be remembered as a victim.
"Yes, what happened was unfortunate," Eloise said. "But she was my mum and she was very much a strong person."
Next year, they will hold a ceremony in Hamilton to spread her ashes along with Robbie's ashes.
She carried Robbie's death with her to the end, Eloise said. When she died, she still had the hospital anklet from his birth.
"Out of everything, I wouldn't trade my kids for the world," Kathryn said in 2016. "The only decent thing I ever did right in my life was my children. They were never a mistake."
