This $1.4 million Adelaide mansion has been seized to pay a $2000 debt

DRAMATIC scenes at this morning’s auction finally ended a standoff over a $2000 debt, which put this $1.4 million mansion on the Sheriff’s forced sale list.

This $1.4m mansion is to be sold to pay a $2000 debt. Picture: Jonathan Kissock for Klemich Real Estate

IT’S A luxury home fit for a queen, in Adelaide’s swanky inner north.

With lofty high ceilings and marble fireplaces, walk-in wardrobes and wine cellar, this three-bedroom, two-bathroom Victorian terrace promised to get plenty of attention at auction this morning.

But its owner, psychiatrist Helen Marmanidis, agreed at the eleventh hour to pay the minuscule debt that led to a court order to sell her $1.4 million property.

Dr Marmanidis and her eye doctor husband Michael Hammerton are used to hobnobbing with Adelaide’s high society, but the pair found themselves unceremoniously evicted over a $2084 debt — less than annual council rates paid on the property.

She told news.com.au she had no idea that a summary judgment had been entered against her in 2013 — for a car accident she doesn’t recall being involved in — until a year later.

Turfed out: Michael Hammerton and Helen Marmanidis. Picture: Noelle Bobrige

The locks were changed by the Sheriff’s office and the Barton Terrace property listed for auction on Friday.

After defiantly refusing to pay up, Dr Marmanidis was given until 10am to settle the debt, which had risen to $14,800 including legal costs.

But the psychiatrist, who insists she was not involved in a car accident in 2012, relented at the eleventh hour and agreed to pay the debt, the Adelaide Advertiser reports.

The swanky inner-north Adelaide home overlooks parklands.

Properties sold under Sheriff’s orders typically fetch less than their market value, so Drs Marmanidis and Hammerton may have to go hunting for a more humble abode if their property is sold.

Earlier, the mother-of-one told the Advertiser: “Never in my life have I done anything just because I have been told to do so. I am not going to pay the money.”

She said the matter reflected badly on the court system, which she compared to the developing world.

“This is a democracy ... we are not in Myanmar. It doesn’t feel like it is Australia. This is an odd situation,” Dr Marmanidis told the Advertiser.

The kitchen is sparkling.

Oren Klemich, the owner of the estate agency behind the sale, told news.com.au he had never witnessed a situation quite like this before.

The man involved in the 2012 accident, Samuel Germein, told the Advertiser there were no hard feelings.

“It was a perfectly innocent accident and a minor one,” he said.

“I just claimed for it and I thought, ‘That is it, it is done’. I don’t hold any malice towards her. It was just a car accident. I am surprised.”

Klemich Real Estate agent Marina Ormsby told the Advertiser: “At any time, Dr Marmanidis can pay what is owing and avoid the sale of the house. The enforcement of this order is being followed appropriately by the Sheriff.”

Fit for a king and queen.

WHEN PROPERTY IS AT STAKE

It is not the first time the psychiatrist and her husband have had their property interests impinged upon by an unpaid debt.

In 2009, Dr Marmanidis went to court to try and have a charge order removed from a property she jointly owned with Dr Hammerton. She was unsuccessful.

The charge order, which prevented the pair from selling the property or securing loans against it, was made after Dr Hammerton failed to pay his former defacto Libby Gleeson $30,000 towards her legal costs from their property settlement dispute, as directed by the District Court.

But the court refused to lift the charge order on the grounds there was “no good reason to interfere” with it.

Justice John Sulan said in his written decision that Dr Marmanidis had complained “that the existence of the order had damaged the professional reputation and social standing of both herself and Dr Hammerton”.

But, he concluded: “None of the arguments advanced by Dr Marmanidis satisfied me that I should make an order lifting or varying the charging order.”

The dispute between Dr Hammerton and Ms Gleeson over the division of assets from their 12-year relationship — which delivered Ms Gleeson, the mother of Dr Hammerton’s child, a $210,000 property settlement — dragged on for a decade.

In 2010, Justice Peek dismissed an interlocutory costs application made by Dr Hammerton “on the basis that it discloses no reasonable cause of action and is also frivolous and also vexatious and also an abuse of process of the Court”.

Dr Hammerton had argued that he should be awarded costs on two parts of the legal dispute in which he had been successful.

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