Lawyer’s two wives are battling over a missing £434,000 from his estate

The two wives of a dead lawyer are in a court fight over claims that one of them ‘misappropriated’ £434,000 in cash from his estate.

Bartholomew Gold, 43, died in December 2020, leaving behind his Thai widow, Phikul Harte and his ex-wife, Marsha Gomez.

Gold, who was previously a ‘rising star’ with City law firm Field Fisher, died without making a will, and under the laws of intestacy, his estate was to be split between his widow and a teenage son from his previous marriage to AirBnB hostess, Marsha Gomez.

But a court dispute was triggered after £434,134 ‘mistakenly’ ended up in the account of Gomez, 49, leading Harte to claim that her dead husband’s ex-wife had gone on to ‘dissipate and misappropriate’ the cash.

Last year, a judge ordered Gomez to pay back the money, but after she failed to do so, Gold’s widow launched a lawsuit to freeze Gomez’s assets.

She claims Mrs Gomez squandered the cash on ‘speculative investments,’ gifts to third parties and new double glazing – and that without a freezing injunction, there is a risk her assets will be ‘dissipated’ before the money can be returned.

Gomez has accepted using the money and losing £275,000 of it in a fumbled investment, but says she plans to settle her debt.

Central London County Court heard Gold married Mrs Harte after divorcing his earlier wife, Gomez.

They lived together in his seven-bedroom seafront home in Langstone, Hampshire, with a spa, private boathouse and a stretch of private sea frontage.

After Gold died in 2020 without a will, his estate was estimated to be about £800,000 after expenses, to be split up between his widow and his teenage son.

As his widow, Harte was allowed to receive £322,000 of the estate and split the remainder with her husband’s son.

But issues arose when the £434,134 from the sale of his house, which had been marketed at £2m, was paid to Gomez in early 2024.

The case went to the High Court last April when a judge, Deputy Master John Linwood, declared that Gold had died intestate and that the Barthomolew House sale proceeds belong to his estate.

Last April, Gomez was also ordered to repay the £447,427 with interest, but she’s so far failed to pay up.

Last week, the case went back to court, where Judge Alan Johns KC was asked to freeze Gomez’s assets.

Barrister Emma Germany, representing Harte, said Gomez had dissipated significant amounts of the money in June 2024 when she was already on notice that there was a claim in relation to it.

She said £38,877 had gone on mortgage repayments, £35,724 on credit card and loan bills and £34,308 on ‘sundries’ which included new double-glazed windows at one of her houses and ‘general living expenses’.

Gomez said: ‘It is not disputed that I received the sum of circa £435,000. I then invested £275,000 of this money. The remaining £160,000 was then spent, gifted and used to pay for legal fees in the sum of between £30,000 to £40,000.

‘In short, therefore, the monies are not readily available for payment to the claimant because they have been dissipated.’

But Harte’s lawyer said an asset freeze is necessary due to an ongoing ‘risk of dissipation’.

‘The defendant has dissipated estate funds which she knew did not belong to her beneficially and has continuously chosen not to disclose various assets in her ownership or control in breach of various orders against her,’ Germany said.

But Gomez is fighting the injunction bid, with her barrister, Suleman Shams, arguing that its continuation would be ‘unnecessary and disproportionate’.

Gomez’s barrister stressed that she is keen to ‘resolve the debt’, and is able to pay off Harte and the estate on the back of her lucrative property portfolio.

Barrister Shams said the injunction order was ‘draconian’ because the defendant has ‘ongoing property and business expenses, including Airbnb-related costs, and that the order has affected her ability to meet those’.

After a day in court, Judge Johns reserved his decision on whether to continue the freezing injunction.

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