Gold Coast son ordered to pay dad back $15,000 after court decides money was not a gift

Hey kids, be careful asking your parents for a loan because you could be forced to pay it back, just like this Gold Coast man who owed his pensioner father $15k.

Background of Australian fifty dollar bills. Full-frame. generic money, notes, cash.

A GOLD Coast son has been ordered to pay back $15,000 to his pensioner father after a Queensland tribunal ruled the money was a loan and not a gift.

David Lopez was given $10,000 by his father Clement in 2014 and two years later another $5000.

Clement Lopez took the matter to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal chasing his money back.

After two hearings and two different decisions by QCAT judges, David Lopez was ordered to pay his father back in October. The tribunal only published the decision this month.

“I lent my son (David) an initial sum of $10,000 in or about 2014, with him undertaking to

immediately begin repaying it by regular instalments, which he failed to do,” Clement Lopez told the tribunal.

The man was forced to pay back thousands of dollars by a Queensland tribunal.

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“Then some two years later he borrowed a further $5000 and promised to repay that amount in full within two weeks.

“(He) failed to pay anything in respect of the money loaned to him other than $50 on 23 October 2017, only after a letter of demand was sent to him.”

The tribunal heard David Lopez insisted the $10,000 payment was a gift and denied receiving a further $5000.

In his decision, QCAT member John Forbes wrote: “In response to David’s denial that he received a further $5000, Clement tendered a bank record showing a withdrawal of that amount on July 17, 2015.

“Accordingly to Clement, David accompanied him to the bank at that time.”

David Lopez argued that the first decision was wrong because his father initiated the purchase of a unit (for which the money was used), the money was a gift and the unit was bought for Clement Lopez’s benefit.

“However, David and his wife, not Clement, lived there and when the unit was sold, David was the vendor,” Mr Forbes wrote.

David Lopez was ordered to pay back the loan to his father.