A woman who handed over more than $550,000 to her parents over 11 years, thinking she was paying for ownership of the $1.1 million home her parents bought on her behalf, has lost her legal bid to stop the sale – but she could get a share of the profits.
Breanna Lane filed a civil lawsuit against her parents, Alan and Wendy Briggs Supreme Court by Western Australia in July, due to claims, they had an informal agreement that the house would become hers if she made monthly repayments.
Ms Lane, who previously ran her own commercial property business and now works for the University of WA, told the court she and her husband, Ben Lane, were facing financial difficulties in 2014 and her parents agreed to help.
The retirees borrowed $1.2 million to buy the three-bedroom Swanbourne home, located just three minutes from Perth‘s picturesque Cottesloe Beach, with the understanding that their daughter and son-in-law would pay $4,300 a month to live there.
But while Ms Lane thought she was paying off the mortgage, her parents told the court they were under the impression she was a rent-paying tenant and there was no written or oral agreement suggesting otherwise.
Furthermore, according to Judge Larissa Strk’s ruling last Wednesday, Mr. and Mrs. Briggs said their daughter would periodically pay irregular rent amounts, sometimes nothing at all and other times as little as $334 a month, eventually falling behind on payments of $5,300.
The Briggses also said that Ms. Lane faced further financial difficulties in mid-2024 and that they gave her more than $10,000 a month for the next year to cover her expenses, amounting to about $122,000.
Breanna Lane (pictured) tried to stop her parents from selling their investment property
Alan and Wendy Briggs (pictured) bought a house for their daughter and her family to live in
The house cost $1.1 million and their daughter, Breanna Lane, made monthly payments
In the judgment, Ms Lane claimed she visited her parents at their former five-bedroom estate in Yallingup, in the Margaret River region south of Perth, in October 2014 and told them her young family was at risk of losing their rent in Claremont.
She claimed that her father would not help them buy a property in their own names by acting as a guarantor, but instead agreed to buy a house in his name and let his daughter pay the mortgage so that she would eventually own it herself.
According to Ms Lane, her father said it was the only way they could stop renting, provide stability for their children and get back on the property ladder.
The Briggses purchased the property in November 2014 and the Lanes began making payments the following month.
Ms Lane calculated that she made 69 monthly repayments between December 2014 and August 2020, totaling €296,700. She then withdrew $10,000 from her pension through the government’s COVID-19 program to keep up with repayments.
Ms Lane said she continued to make monthly repayments between September 2020 and April 2026, which were shown on bank statements as ‘mortgage’.
She acknowledged missing three payments, but claimed she paid a total of $253,462 during that period, along with another $19,080 between 2015 and 2022 for fireplace installation, electrical work, security measures and other items.
The dispute began in 2024 when Mr Briggs told his daughter that the property was his, that she was a tenant and that a lease agreement needed to be entered into. The next year he told her he wanted to sell the house.
Breanna Lane (pictured) was struggling financially in 2014 when her parents bought the house
The house was in an affluent part of Perth and had a swimming pool and three bedrooms (pictured)
Noting that the parties gave starkly conflicting accounts of the arrangement, Judge Strk emphasized that the court was not determining whose version was correct at this stage, but only whether Ms Lane’s claim was disputable.
Ms. Lane called the agent and told them she would not agree to viewings by potential buyers. The officer complied with her wishes.
Between October 2024 and January 2026, Ms Lane said she received a series of text messages from her father in which he appeared to offer to give her money.
On October 16, 2024, he wrote: “Remember that when you sell, you have money to invest or to make up any shortfall.”
Two weeks later he writes: ‘Once the house has been sold, we can give you money or send it selectively, then we can discuss it by telephone.’
On January 20, 2026, he made her a proposal for the sale of the property and the allocation of the profits.
Four days later he wrote: ‘I may be repeating what you are already doing, but it appears that the agent is working to close the sale of [the house] and the location of a house for you. All this requires coordination of the settlement.’
The Briggses accepted an offer on the house in April 2026. The amount was not specified in the judgment, but real estate databases indicate the property has nearly doubled in value and is now worth about $2 million.
Ms. Lane stopped making payments on July 9. Later that month, she initiated legal action against her parents.
Pictured: A mock-up of text messages Alan Briggs sent to his daughter Breanna Lane
Although her parents did not dispute the sequence of events or the amount Mrs Lane paid, they told the court the fundamental misunderstanding concerned ownership of the property. They claimed they never said their daughter would eventually own it.
In her judgment, Judge Strk found that Ms Lane had raised a serious question for trial, but said her claim was ‘not strong’ and that the dispute would ultimately have to be resolved in separate proceedings.
Furthermore, the Briggses told the court they kept diaries of conversations with their daughter about the property and said there were no records of her visiting the Yallingup home to discuss her impending eviction in 2014.
They also said that money was rarely discussed at family gatherings, other than details regarding the agreement that the house would eventually be sold.
Mr Briggs said Ms Lane sometimes wrote ‘rent’ in the descriptions of her bank transfers to him, and that after April 2020 those descriptions sometimes alternated between ‘rent’ and ‘mortgage’.
Mr Briggs also said Ms Lane told him of further financial difficulties in June 2024, so he offered to pay her $10,000 a month on the condition she continued to pay the rent.
According to Mr Briggs’ evidence, he told Ms Lane she needed to demonstrate that the ongoing payments would help her secure another rental property in the future.
He told the court that he and his wife gave their daughter $10,000 a month, plus another $2,100 in July 2025, for a total of $122,100 to subsidize her income and living expenses.
Mr and Mrs Briggs said they bought the house with a 12-year mortgage, which meant they could keep repayments at $5,500 a month because they were only paying the interest on the loan, rather than reducing the principal.
Breanna Lane (photo) tried to prevent her parents from selling their investment property, where she lived with her family
If the property were not sold by December 2026, repayments would nearly double to $10,500 per month to cover the remaining $1.2 million debt, plus interest.
The couple told the court they had a history of buying houses with interest-only loans and would be left out of money by 2032 if they were forced to pay the remainder of the loan on the Swanbourne estate.
Ms Lane had sought to impose an ‘absolute caveat’ on the title to stop the registration of new transactions, sales or transfers.
Judge Strk ordered that the caveat be removed and allowed the sale to proceed, ruling that the balance of convenience favored the sale of the property and instead retained any disputed interests through the sale proceeds. She noted that the parents were facing increasing repayments on their loans – which were expected to reach $13,513 per month by December 2026 – and that Ms Lane had not offered to take over or pay off the mortgage.
However, the judge said Ms Lane may have a claim to the sale proceeds, estimated at around $800,000 after the loan, settlement costs and capital gains tax were paid, and ordered her to commence formal proceedings against her parents within 21 days.
The judge ordered that the winnings be placed in a court fund until any additional claim was determined.
