A lawyer who tried to claim ownership of a house in Sydney’s inner west under squatter’s rights has lost a court fight with the homeowner for possession of the property.
Yael Abraham, described on her website as “a lawyer and activist for children’s and animal rights”, had her work as a foster mother featured on the ABC’s Australian Story in 2009.
In a photo from her website, Yael Abraham is shown outside her multimillion-dollar Queensland home.Credit: yaelabraham.com
Mary Willis, the owner of two homes in a Rozelle street, launched NSW Supreme Court proceedings against Abraham in 2023, seeking possession of both properties. Willis inherited the houses from her father decades ago.
Abraham owns a $7 million Queensland home. She gave up her challenge for possession of one of the Rozelle homes last year, but maintained her fight for the second house.
Under NSW adverse possession laws, known colloquially as squatter’s rights, a person who occupies a property continuously for at least 12 years without force or secrecy – meaning it is done openly and visibly – may be entitled to ownership.
The residence must be occupied without the owner’s permission. Doing things an owner would do, such as changing locks and paying rates, is consistent with adverse possession.
Abraham has worked as a solicitor and a real estate agent. She argued she was entitled to the Rozelle home because the 12-year limitation period had expired.
Her barrister told the court Abraham “tried to contact and let this lady know that she was living in the property”.
Acting Justice Michael Elkaim said in his decision that Abraham said she heard about three apparently abandoned properties in Sydney from her brother and visited them in late 2009.
Abraham said she started storing furniture and boxes at the Rozelle home when she and her family moved from Burradoo in NSW’s Southern Highlands to Zetland in 2011. They moved later to Vaucluse in Sydney’s east.
Her “evidence ... is that between 2009 and 2011 she visited [the home] about once a month” and started a cleanup, Elkaim said.
“She put in ‘lockable doors’ … but she did not fix the broken front window.”
Willis had a tenant in the home until January 2000. An agent managed the property until 2014. Council rates and other fees were paid during that time.
The judge said photos taken in March 2011, along with an invoice from a property maintenance business to the agent for gardening and rubbish removal, were “not ... consistent with [the house] being used to store furniture and having been cleaned” at that time.
In any case, Elkaim said using the property “as a storeroom does not substantiate … adverse possession” because it was not being used “as a residence”.
Payment of rates “assumed some importance” in the case, the judge said, because last year Abraham “telephoned the Inner West Council and pretended to be [Willis], and arranged to pay the outstanding rates”.
“The proceedings had already commenced and there is a particularly strong inference available that [Abraham] .… was paying the rates in order to bolster her claim for possession.”
Abraham’s eldest child gave evidence that they took up residence at the property in 2016 after living there part-time from 2012. The judge said the house “did not have a functional bathroom in 2012 and probably not until 2016”.
Elkaim said he was not satisfied Abraham took physical possession of the property until 2016 when her child moved in full-time. Earlier use of the property as “a storeroom and occasional place of study” was not “using it in the nature of a residence”.
He said this alone defeated Abraham’s adverse possession claim because the 12-year period had not expired. However, it was also significant that her occupation was not visible.
“Albeit for the good reason of not wishing to attract possible intruders, [Abraham], deliberately, took no action to display her occupation to the outside world until much later [than 2011],” Elkaim said.
“The front windows were never mended, and the roof was only repaired in the last five years. In other words, to the passerby, the appearance of occupation was not apparent.”
Abraham had also claimed she had “permission to be in the premises”, Elkaim said. The court heard that in a 2023 email, she told the agent Willis “gave us the keys following watching a TV program on the ABC” and she “also spoke to Mary back in about 2011”. Elkaim said the first conversation was in 2016.
Abraham’s representation that she, or her child, had permission to occupy the property “was contrary to the requirement for open possession” because it was “possession continued by stealth”, the judge said. He entered judgment in favour of Willis.
Abraham is the principal of Assetnet Properties, a private company which “purchases, sells, renovates and builds property ... throughout QLD and NSW”, a website for the company says.
HOUSE RULES
- Adverse possession, sometimes called squatter’s rights, allows a person to claim a vacant property in some circumstances. They must occupy the land continuously for at least 12 years, and do so without: (a) force, (b) secrecy, and (c) the landowner’s permission.
- There is also a 30-year period that extinguishes the original owner’s claim even if the 12-year limitation period can’t start running for various reasons, such as if the owner has a mental incapacity or it was difficult to discover with reasonable diligence that someone had moved in (e.g. a remote or inaccessible property).
- Among a string of adverse possession cases in Sydney in recent years was a dispute between neighbours over a Redfern “dunny lane” and cases about houses in Bankstown and Gymea Bay.