A Sydney woman who gave up her teaching career, scaled back her gymnastics business and worked unpaid in her family's newsagency to care for her terminally ill parents has lost a court battle over the multi-million-dollar Gymea Bay waterfront property she believed had been promised to her. Jessie Sellar, 39, sought a 50 per cent share of the estate left by her late father Allan Sellar, arguing repeated verbal assurances from both parents entitled her to half, but the NSW Supreme Court ruled these promises were not legally enforceable, leaving her stepsiblings to inherit the bulk of the estate.

Justice Francois Kunc awarded Jessie only $128,700 for conceded mortgage and property contributions and ordered her to pay stepsiblings Darren and Paula's legal costs, though he acknowledged she had made "life-changing decisions" for her parents and accepted that many of the conversations she described had genuinely taken place. The court heard her parents, Tracey and Allan Sellar, had signed mutual wills in 1990 leaving their estate to Paula and Darren, and then Jessie, in equal shares, but the judge found Jessie knew by 2015 that these wills prevented her father from unilaterally changing the arrangement. Tracey died of cancer in 2015 aged 54, before Allan, who died three years later after a stroke, leaving the family home, granny flat, boatshed and cottage undivided as promised.