XCTest and KIF Common Methods in Separate Class

So I'm writing UI Tests with KIF and XCTest. There is a lot of duplicate code in my test cases so I decided to subclass XCTest and put all my common code there. The problem I'm running into is that if an assertion fails in the common code (super class) the test fails but gives no indication as to what failed. Any ideas on how to pass the failed assertion up to the test that called it and flag the message?