A Thai masseuse is locked in a bitter court fight after £434,000 of her late husband’s money ‘mistakenly’ ended up in his ex-wife’s bank account.
High-flying corporate lawyer, Bartholomew Gold, died in December 2020, aged just 43, leaving behind his widow, Phikul Harte, 43, and a spectacular £2million Hampshire beachside home.
Mr Gold, who was previously a ‘rising star’ with top City law firm Field Fisher, died without making a will.
Under the laws of intestacy, his estate stood to be split between his widow and a teenage son from his previous marriage to AirBnB hostess, Marsha Gomez.
But a bitter court dispute was triggered after £434,134 ‘mistakenly’ ended up in the account of 49-year-old Mrs Gomez.
It led masseuse Mrs Harte to claim that her dead husband’s ex-wife had gone on to ‘dissipate and misappropriate’ the cash.
Mrs Gomez has failed to pay the money back after a judge last year ordered her to do so.
Mr Gold’s widow is now suing in a bid to extend an order freezing his ex’s assets.
High-flying corporate lawyer, Bartholomew Gold (right), died in December 2020, aged just 43, leaving behind his widow, Phikul Harte, 43 (left)
A bitter court dispute was triggered after £434,134 of Mr Gold’s money ‘mistakenly’ ended up in the account of his 49-year-old ex-wife, Marsha Gomez (pictured)
She says Mrs Gomez squandered much of the cash on ‘speculative investments’, gifts to unknown ‘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.
But although she accepts receiving and using the money, losing £275,000 on a failed investment in her son’s name, Mrs Gomez insists that she intends to settle her debt and that there is no risk that she will get rid of her assets to avoid doing so.
Central London County Court heard Mr Gold, a former intellectual property specialist and partner at top law firm Field Fisher, married Mrs Harte after divorcing his earlier wife, Mrs Gomez.
They lived together in his seven-bedroom seafront home in Langstone, Hampshire – known as Bartholomew House – which enjoys a spa, private boathouse and a stretch of private sea frontage.
The property was also operated as a guest house and by Mrs Harte as a therapy suite, where she specialised in a combination of both eastern and western massage.
Mr Gold died in 2020 without a will, leaving his estate – estimated to be worth £800,000 after expenses – to be split up between his widow and his teenage son.
Under intestacy rules, Mrs Harte as his widow would receive the first £322,000 from his estate and then split the rest equally with her husband’s son.
But the problems erupted after his death when £434,134 from the sale of his house – which had been marketed at £2million – and contents were ‘mistakenly’ paid to Mrs Gomez in early 2024.
The case went to the High Court last April when a judge, Deputy Master John Linwood, declared that Mr Gold had died intestate and that the Barthomolew House sale proceeds belong to his estate.
Mrs Harte (pictured) lived with Mr Gold in his seven-bedroom seafront home in Langstone, Hampshire
On top of that, the judge removed Mrs Gomez as a personal representative of her ex-husband’s estate, ordered her to repay a total of £447,427 – which included interest – and threw out her ‘proprietary estoppel’ claim for any entitlement to a share of the estate.
However, since then Mrs Gomez has failed to stump up the missing cash and the case ended up before Judge Alan Johns KC in Central London County Court last week.
Her lawyers asked the judge to extend an injunction made in January, which froze the house proceeds, barring Mrs Gomez from dealing with ‘proprietary assets’ such as specific shares and premium bonds, and froze her own assets up to the value of £650,000.
For Mrs Harte, barrister Emma Germany said Mrs 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’.
In her own statement, Mrs Gomez said: ‘It is not disputed that I received the sum of circa £435,000. I then invested £275,000 of these monies… Shares were bought in the name of my son.
‘The remaining £160,000 was then spent, gifted and used to pay for legal fees in the sum of between £30,000 and £40,000. In short, therefore, the monies are not readily available for payment to the claimant because they have been dissipated.’
Arguing that a freezing injunction is needed because there is a ‘real and continuing risk of dissipation’ before the money is returned, the barrister said Mrs Gomez had suggested throughout the High Court proceedings that she held the funds and was keeping them ‘safe’.
‘It is clear from the defendant’s October witness statement and recent affidavits that this was untrue,’ she said.
But Mrs Gomez is fighting the injunction bid, with her barrister, Suleman Shams, arguing that its continuation would be ‘unnecessary and disproportionate’, adding that it is ‘unsupported by evidence of any real risk of unjustified dissipation’.
The asset freezing order has had a disruptive impact on her personal and financial life, the barrister said, noting that she had even been locked out of one of her accounts for a month after her bank learned of the injunction.
But her barrister stressed that she is keen to ‘resolve the debt’, and is well able to pay off Mrs Harte and the estate on the back of her lucrative property portfolio.
She currently holds £875,000 equity, comprising a £1.1million house in Chesterfield Gardens, Haringey, north London, and two properties in nearby Endymion Road.
‘Her evidence is that she has been marketing Chesterfield Gardens since mid-2025 in order to resolve the debt,’ Mr Shams told Judge Alan Johns KC, adding that Mrs Gomez is also ready to consent to a legal charge over her property to the tune of £434,134, which would provide ‘alternative security’ to a continuing injunction.
Mr Gold, who was previously a ‘rising star’ with top City law firm Field Fisher, died without making a will
Attacking the injunction order as ‘draconian,’ Mr Shams pointed out that it caps Mrs Gomez’s ‘ordinary living expenses’ at £500 per week and told the court: ‘The evidence is that she has ongoing property and business expenses, including Airbnb-related costs, and that the order has affected her ability to meet those.
‘A freezing injunction should not operate so as to prevent someone from living or from maintaining assets which also serve the claimant’s enforcement interest,’ he argued.
In addition, he said Mrs Gomez also intends to pursue a claim against her ex-husband’s estate for alleged debts owed to her, ‘which will offset a substantial portion of the sums owed to Mrs Harte’.
After a day in court, Judge Johns reserved his decision on whether to continue the freezing injunction.
