---
title: "Ownership — Teams for Laravel | Roundly"
description: "Check and transfer team ownership; the previous owner stays on as an admin, and a built-in owner ability replaces owner-only permissions."
url: https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/teams-for-laravel/ownership
language: en
---

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[Teams for Laravel](https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/teams-for-laravel.md)

# Ownership

A team’s owner is a polymorphic relation, so any model can own a team. Check it from either side:

```php
$team->owner;              // the owning model, or null
$team->isOwnedBy($user);   // bool
$user->ownsTeam($team);    // bool — via the HasTeams trait

Teams::for($team)->transferOwnershipTo($newOwner);
```

## Transferring ownership

transferOwnershipTo() runs TransferOwnershipAction in one transaction:

- The new owner is seated first, ensured to be a member with roles.owner.
- The previous owner (if any, and not the same model) stays on the team, demoted to roles.admin — admin by default.
- owner\_type and owner\_id move to the new owner.
- TeamOwnershipTransferred fires with the team, the previous owner (nullable) and the new owner.

The transfer is all-or-nothing. If the new owner can’t be seated — the team’s MaxSeats is reached — it throws TeamsException and the owner, the roster and every role stay exactly as they were.

```php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Event;
use RoundlyConsulting\Teams\Events\TeamOwnershipTransferred;

Event::listen(function (TeamOwnershipTransferred $event): void {
    // $event->team, $event->previousOwner (nullable), $event->newOwner
});
```

## The owner ability

A first-class owner ability removes hand-rolled owner-only permissions. It checks ownership itself, not a role, so it works even if your owner role grants nothing:

```php
$user->can('teams.owner', $team);   // true only for the owner

Gate::authorize('teams.owner', $team);   // 403 for everyone else
```

```blade
@teamOwner($team)
    <button>Delete team</button>
@endteamOwner
```

The ability name is gate.prefix + gate.owner\_ability — teams.owner by default.

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