Vanessa Amorosi and her mother were close – until money and fame tore them apart
At 19 years old, Vanessa Amorosi had the world at her feet performing her global hit to crowds of 110,000. Two decades later, it’s a different story, as the singer instead took centre stage in a family courtroom drama.
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Vanessa Amorosi had the world at her feet.
On the back of her successful debut album, the then 19-year-old Melbourne-born singer performed in front of 110,000 spectators and a television audience in the billions at the Sydney Olympics.
Breakfast TV shows, radio interviews, magazine photo shoots and sold-out crowds followed as Ms Amorosi — whose song Absolutely Everybody was a global hit — toured the world.
More than two decades later it’s a different story.
Giving evidence before a Supreme Court trial, Ms Amorosi, 43, broke down several times as she accused her mother, Joyleen Robinson, of exploiting her wealth when she was at the height of her success.
In yet another instance of a celebrity suing family over alleged financial abuse, the US-based musician took her mother to court to wrest control of two homes, a 20-acre property in Narre Warren purchased for $650,000 in 2001, and the other in California.
Ms Amorosi paid for the semi-rural Narre Warren property but the title was split evenly between her and her mother, purportedly to protect her from creditors.
The bitter dispute saw Ms Amorosi ostracised from her family and played out in a five-day trial in October last year that pitted the mother and daughter against each other.
Lawyers for both women painted the other as liars, pointing out inconsistencies in their accounts of financial discussions and agreements dating back decades.
Ms Robinson’s lawyer Daniel Harrison suggested Ms Amorosi, who earned millions over her career, was suing her mother because she had run out of money.
But the pop star accused Ms Robinson of taking control of her finances from a young age and manipulating her into being suspicious of everyone else.
“As time progressed and I made more money and I became more successful everybody became the enemy,” Ms Amorosi, who flew to Melbourne for the trial, said in an emotional testimony that ran over two days.
“Boyfriends were enemies, husband was the enemy. She was to be the only one there with the right intentions and I believed it.”
In her evidence, Ms Robinson was brought to tears as she described the toll of the relationship breakdown with her daughter.
“My daughter and I were like one person, I loved her, I thought she loved me, which she did. She was a good daughter,” she said.
“I wouldn’t take money off my kids.”
Ms Robinson claimed she made a pact with her daughter in the kitchen of her home in February 2001, in which the singer agreed to relinquish her half ownership if she was paid the purchase price.
The alleged conversation — which Ms Amorosi denied ever took place — was key to Ms Robinson’s case and known as the “kitchen agreement”.
The trial heard Ms Amorosi was discovered by former Australian Idol judge Mark Holden —who supported her in court — and artist manager Jack Strom while she was singing at a Russian restaurant in Carnegie as a teenager.
Her career took off with the singles Have a Look and Absolutely Everybody followed by her album The Power, which debuted at number one on the Australian charts.
A tax return shown to court revealed the young singer earned $862,000 in 2001, which she said mostly came from royalties and touring.
After her new-found success, Ms Amorosi said her mother took control of her finances by establishing various trusts, including one named Llama, which held her earnings and was used to purchase property in Melbourne and the United States.
Ms Amorosi said the bitter dispute with her mother began in late 2014, when she was forced to sell her first American home because she couldn’t afford payments.
When she began to question her mother’s management of her finances, she said a “war” broke out with her family and she was ostracised.
“I had a lot of assets. There was nothing left,” she said.
“I couldn’t get the answers to what had really gone down and why I was losing my house.
“She said I spent all the money and that I should come home and get to work, I should go back to touring.”
In email exchanges shown to the court, she called her mum “f--king disgusting” and labelled some family members “judgmental righteous assholes”.
Seated in court metres from her estranged family, she quipped her mother had been “very generous with my money”.
The singer took multiple breaks to compose herself during her emotionally charged testimony, while other members of her family comforted Ms Robinson as her daughter spoke.
By 2017, Ms Amorosi hired accountants to examine financial records relating to the trusts, before she launched legal action against her mother in 2021.
Taking to the witness box, Ms Robinson denied she had spent her daughter’s money and, on the contrary, had financially helped her when she had struggled.
She was adamant there was an agreement that Ms Amorosi would buy the house, and she would repay the $650,000 any time her daughter needed it by selling her own home.
In 2014, Ms Robinson claimed she fulfilled her end of the bargain when she paid $710,000 towards a loan on her daughter’s Californian home after selling her own property.
Under cross-examination by Ms Amorosi’s lawyer Philip Solomon KC, Ms Robinson said there was no written record of the agreement because it was between a “mother and daughter that trusted each other”.
Mr Solomon suggested Ms Robinson invented the pact after the dispute began, grilling her on the details of the conversation and inconsistencies in her own accounts, including why she said her husband was part of the agreement despite earlier testifying it was only her and her daughter.
“I made the mistake and I’m only human,” she said, clarifying he was not present for the conversation.
Ms Amorosi was also subjected to a cross-examination grilling, with her mother’s lawyer, Mr Harrison, putting it to her that she had lied to financial regulator ASIC when declaring her touring company was not part of any legal disputes.
Mr Harrison took Ms Amorosi to various documents, including bank statements, mortgage documents and legal letters, some dating back decades, which she claimed to have little or no recollection of.
“You don’t have a very good memory, full stop,” he said.
“I disagree,” she replied.
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