Judge’s birthday gift to Amorosi ends years-long family feud
Australian pop star Vanessa Amorosi has celebrated her 43rd birthday with a win in her years-long and bitter property dispute with her estranged mother.
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The estranged mother of Australian pop star Vanessa Amorosi faces eviction after her daughter won a bitter property dispute, bringing to an end a years-long legal feud.
The Melbourne-born singer launched legal action against Joyleen Robinson, seeking sole ownership of two properties — one in Melbourne’s southeast and the other in California.
Supreme Court Justice Steven Moore on Thursday handed Ms Amorosi — who is celebrating her 43rd birthday — a gift, when he delivered his long-awaited findings and ruled in her favour.
In his judgement, Justice Moore found Ms Robinson’s claim for sole ownership of a semirural property on Boundary Rd in Narre Warren had failed.
However it was not a complete win for Ms Amorosi, with the judge ordering her to pay her mother more than $850,000 in restitution.
The family stoush played out in an emotionally charged five-day trial last year and centred on the property which Ms Amorosi jointly purchased with her mother for $650,000 in 2001.
The title was split between the pair, while the California home was owned by a trust directed by her stepfather, but Ms Amorosi claimed both were purchased with her music earnings.
Ms Amorosi sued her mother seeking full ownership or a court order that the Narre Warren home be sold, but Ms Robinson countersued, claiming the property — which she lived in for more than two decades — was purchased for her.
Ms Robinson said an agreement with Ms Amorosi took place in her kitchen shortly before the property was purchased in which her daughter agreed to relinquish her half ownership if Ms Robinson paid the purchase price.
Her mother claimed she fulfilled her end of the bargain when she paid her daughter $710,000 for a loan on her American home after selling her own property in 2014.
But Justice Moore on Thursday found the agreement never happened.
“The shifting and inconsistent course of Mrs Robinson’s evidence leaves me entirely
unconvinced that there existed a Narre Warren agreement as alleged,” he said in his written reasons.
“I did not find Mrs Robinson to be a reliable witness in her evidence to the court.”
Lawyers for Ms Robinson tried to paint Ms Amorosi as unreliable, but Justice Moore rejected their claims.
“It is entirely unsurprising that some of Ms Amorosi’s evidence about conversations she had with her mother more than 20 years ago when she was an 18-year-old touring the world as an international popstar was general and non-specific,” he said.
He granted sole ownership to Ms Amorosi — meaning Ms Robinson faces eviction — but ordered her to repay her mother the purchase price of $650,000 plus $219,486 in interest.
The judge also granted her sole ownership of the Californian home.
Neither Ms Amorosi or Ms Robinson were in court for the judgement, however other family members were present.
They declined to comment as they left court.
The rupture saw Ms Amorosi ostracised from her family, as the singer accused her mother of misusing her finances.
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