Daughter paid her parents $550k over 11 years believing she was buying their Perth home. They insist she was only a tenant and it must sell
A Western Australian woman, Breanna Lane, has lost a Supreme Court bid to stop her parents selling a Perth home she believed she was buying from them, after paying more than $550,000 over 11 years. Ms Lane claimed her parents, Alan and Wendy Briggs, had an informal agreement that the $1.1 million Swanbourne property would become hers once she covered the mortgage repayments, but her parents insist she was simply a tenant with no such arrangement in place. Justice Larissa Strk ruled against her attempt to block the sale, though the judgment leaves open the possibility she could still receive a share of any profit from it.
The Briggses bought the three-bedroom house near Cottesloe Beach in November 2014 after borrowing $1.2 million, with Ms Lane and her husband expected to pay around $4,300 a month. Ms Lane says she made regular payments totalling roughly $550,000, including a $10,000 early superannuation withdrawal during Covid-19 and further spending on home improvements, while her parents claim payments were irregular, sometimes missed entirely, and that arrears built up. The dispute escalated in 2024 when Mr Briggs told his daughter the house was his and she was merely a tenant, followed by his decision in 2025 to sell it. The court noted the two sides gave starkly different accounts and stressed it was only assessing whether Ms Lane's claim was arguable, not determining who was telling the truth.
- Daughter paid parents $550k believing she was buying their Perth home
- Court rejected her bid to block its sale
- She may still be entitled to a share of any sale profit
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Breanna Lane, a woman from Perth, believed she had an informal deal with her parents, Alan and Wendy Briggs, that a house they owned in the suburb of Swanbourne would eventually become hers if she covered the mortgage repayments. Over 11 years she says she paid around $550,000 towards the property, which is now worth about $1.1 million, but her parents maintain she was always just a tenant and that no such agreement existed.
The relationship broke down in 2024 when her father told her the house was his, and he later moved to sell it in 2025. Ms Lane went to the Western Australian Supreme Court to try to stop the sale, arguing her payments entitled her to the property or a share of it.
The case matters because it centres on a dispute common in families where money changes hands informally, without a written contract, leaving courts to weigh up conflicting accounts of what was actually agreed.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Those sympathetic to Ms Lane argue that eleven years of substantial, regular payments totalling $550,000 – alongside money spent on improvements and a hardship withdrawal from superannuation during Covid – are exactly what one would expect from someone building equity in a home, not merely renting it. Family arrangements are often sealed with trust rather than paperwork, and it is not unreasonable for an adult child to believe a long-standing informal understanding with her own parents would be honoured, particularly given the scale and duration of her financial commitment. On this view, allowing the parents to simply relabel the arrangement as a tenancy years later risks rewarding a unilateral change of mind at the expense of a daughter who structured over a decade of her financial life around a shared family promise.
The case against
Those sympathetic to the Briggses argue that the property was legally theirs, bought with a mortgage in their names, and that without a signed contract of sale or formal transfer of title, no binding agreement to sell existed – informal family goodwill is not the same as an enforceable property transaction. They may point to the parents' account that payments were irregular and sometimes missed, suggesting the arrangement functioned more like a tenancy with arrears than a steady mortgage-style purchase. Parents retaining control over an asset they own and financed, especially where their own financial security or estate planning may depend on it, is a reasonable exercise of ownership rights, and the courts exist precisely to prevent informal family understandings from being treated as binding contracts when the evidence of a genuine sale agreement is disputed.