Justice scales generic. A Queensland judge has ordered a Gladstone woman out of a house she claimed was meant to become hers, finding her 15-year stay was a tenancy, not a backdoor path to ownership. In a District Court ruling, Judge Carl Heaton KC found the evidence “overwhelmingly supports the conclusion” that Tammy Ellem and those living with her were occupying the Clinton property under “an informal rental agreement”, not under any deal to buy the home from former partner Brian Coop. Judge Carl Heaton KC. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard The court declared Mr Coop the sole owner of the property and ordered Ms Ellem and co-occupant Brian Freeman to vacate within 21 days, while damages for unpaid rent and costs will be decided later. The bitter property fight centred on a house bought in 2003 during Mr Coop and Ms Ellem’s de facto relationship. Although they lived there together, the title was registered only in Mr Coop’s name. Years later, after the relationship had ended and both had moved on, Mr Coop let Ms Ellem and her then partner move into the property in 2010. There was no written lease, no bond and no formal paperwork, but regular payments were made for years. When relations later broke down and Mr Coop sought vacant possession so he could repair and sell the home, Ms Ellem claimed the payments were not rent but instalments under a verbal agreement that would eventually see the house transferred to her. The judge rejected that account. His Honour said the alleged oral deal was “nebulous at best” and found Ms Ellem could not properly explain its terms. According to the judgment, she accepted there was “no timeframe, no repayment amount or schedule of payments, and no interest”. The court also found there was no reliable evidence to show what she had supposedly paid towards buying the property, or when any purchase would have been complete. The house at the centre of the case. Source: Google The judgment noted that payments made by Ms Ellem and her then partner were “frequently described in the bank transfer records as ‘rent’”. In 2023, Mr Coop sent her a “Rent Increase Notice” and the court noted she did not object to the payments being described that way . In 2024, Ms Ellem served Mr Coop with a Notice to Remedy Breach under the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act, asserting rights available to a tenant through the Residential Tenancies Authority for Queensland. MORE: Driveway sold for more than Brisbane home price 5 years ago Earning six figures? Why you are officially rent stressed 2m homes: Aus Boomers to make shock move all at once The judge said that move was “conduct which is, in my view, inconsistent with Ms Ellem’s claims of being the owner of the property subject to the oral agreement”. In a text message also examined by the court, Ms Ellem told Mr Coop: “But that is also a landlord issue to fix but you didn’t want to pay a tradie” and “we are tenants, not tradies”. It was, the ruling said, “a contemporaneous record of an acknowledgement by her that she was in fact renting the property and not buying it”. The judgement said: “The overwhelming impression from the objective evidence is that Ms Ellem and Mr Coop conducted themselves as landlord and tenant”. The court also dismissed Ms Ellem’s apparent belief that she already had some kind of half-share in the property because it had been bought while the couple were together. Judge Heaton said: “the formal legal position is that Ms Ellem has no legal interest in the property”. The judge went further, finding there was “no basis now to conclude that the respondent owned a half share in the house”. And in the clearest finding of all, the judge ruled: “I am satisfied that the agreement alleged by Ms Ellem to have been entered into verbally between the parties in 2010 did not exist”. The court added that “the relationship between the parties during Ms Ellem’s occupation of the property was always that of landlord and tenant”. In a pointed criticism of the defence material, the judge said some authorities cited in Ms Ellem’s written submissions “do not exist” or did not support the arguments being made, and “appear to be the product of AI assistance which has ‘hallucinated’,”. The court said that “seriously undermines the credibility of Ms Ellem generally”. For property owners, especially where former partners or family members have informal living arrangements, the ruling reinforces the power of registered title in Queensland, with the court finding Mr Coop was the owner and the respondents had no basis to resist possession.