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A lawyer turned real estate agent was booted out of a supposedly abandoned Sydney property when her squatter’s rights claim failed.
Source: yaelabraham.com
Former lawyer Yael Abraham failed to win possession of a Rozelle property she claimed to have been living in from at least 2011 under NSW’s adverse possession laws, also known as squatter’s rights.
Abraham referred to herself as a lawyer on her website and recent media reports have claimed the same, but a search of her name on each state and territory’s register of solicitors turned up nothing.
Mary Willis, who inherited two properties from her father, filed Supreme Court proceedings in late 2023. Abraham originally challenged ownership of one house but abandoned it last year.
Abraham’s attempts to strengthen her possession claim were to her detriment, with acting Judge Michael Elkaim finding her use from 2011 to about 2015 or 2016 was more akin to a “storeroom” than a place “where a person sleeps, eats and ablutes”.
The court heard Abraham often left furniture at the property and treated it as a “base” when she was in Sydney.
Under the adverse possession laws, the squatter must be living at the property continuously for at least 12 years, do so openly, without the owner’s permission, and do things an owner would typically do.
“Accepting that the defendant had a degree of physical control of [the property] from about 2011, I am not satisfied that it was physical possession of the type required. Had the defendant … ‘lived’ in [the property], the position would have been different,” the judge said.
When visited by Willis’ brother, Abraham claimed she had permission from Willis to occupy the property and pretended she was the real owner in an attempt to pay outstanding rates. This was consistent with “possession continued by stealth”.
While Abraham did make repairs to the doors and maintained parts of the property, she did not fix a broken window. In her evidence, Abraham claimed it was to deter criminal activity.
However, Judge Elkaim said that by leaving it broken, it “did not amount to possession open to the world”.
“Taking the issue of the defendant’s possession being adverse a step further, the possession was not open because the occupation was effectively physically concealed, but also because the defendant held out that she had permission to be in the premises,” Judge Elkaim said.
Judge Elkaim was satisfied possession by Abraham was not open “and therefore not adverse in the required manner”.
“The result is that the limitation period imposed upon [Willis] did not start to run in 2011, and she is not precluded from now pursuing her claim for possession,” Judge Elkaim said.
The case is Willis v Abraham (No 2) [2025] NSWSC 276 (27 March 2025).
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Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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