Vanessa Amorosi: Pop star’s property stoush with mum Joyleen Robinson decided in court

Australian pop sensation Vanessa Amorosi’s bitter property battle with her mother has ended as a judge found their alleged “kitchen agreement” was invented. The 43-year-old singer-songwriter sued her mum Joyleen Robinson for sole ownership of two properties bought using her music earnings but controlled by a trust that listed both women as joint owners. One of these properties is Ms Amorosi’s current California home, while the other is a semirural Narre Warren property in Melbourne her mother has lived in for the past two decades. Ms Robinson countersued, claiming the pair made a verbal “kitchen agreement” in 2001 that the Narre Warren home was bought for her. She claimed the agreement was that if Ms Amorosi ever hit financial difficulty, Ms Robinson would pay her the original $650,000 purchase price. Evidence tendered during the trial showed Ms Robinson and her husband, Peter Robinson, transferred $710,000 from the sale of their home to pay down Ms Amorosi’s $1.2m California mortgage in 2014. The case returned before the Victorian Supreme Court on Thursday as Justice Steven Moore found the kitchen agreement did not exist “at all”. “The shifting and inconsistent course of Mrs Robinson’s evidence leaves me entirely unconvinced that there existed a Narre Warren agreement as alleged,” he said. Justice Moore said at trial Mrs Robinson had freely accepted the trusts were set up to secure the then 19-year-old’s financial security, therefore Ms Amorosi was “entitled” to assume sole control. He directed Mrs Robinson’s share of the Narre Warren home be given to Ms Amorosi after she returned $650,000 plus $219,000 in interest. Neither Ms Amorosi, who the court was told was in America, nor her mother were present in court. Ms Amorosi was catapulted into stardom at 18 with her debut 1999 single Have a Look, which was backed up the following year with her first album The Power after performing at the Sydney Olympic Games. Behind the scenes of her meteoric rise from a schoolgirl performing at a Russian restaurant in Melbourne to an internationally acclaimed pop star, she claimed her mother quickly took control over her finances. “Boyfriends were enemies, husband was the enemy … she was to be the only one there with the right intentions, and I believed it,” Ms Amorosi told the court last year. She said the pair had a falling out in about 2015 and now believed Ms Robinson had exploited her wealth. Despite earning “millions of dollars” throughout the 2000s, she told the court she was forced to sell her home near Los Angeles in 2014. “I asked her to show me where the money had gone. (She said) I spent it all,” Ms Amorosi said. Ms Robinson, on the other hand, said she always acted in her daughter’s interest and was following the advice of an accountant Ms Amorosi’s manager had recommended.“My daughter and I were best friends, there were never any worries about money … I loved her and still love her – that’s the heartbreaking part,” she said.